Class II
by Purple Rookie
Summary: Dr. Halsey's funding for the training of additional SPARTAN-IIs was cut. But that doesn't mean the program was scrapped.
1. Prologue: A Walk Down Memory Lane

**PROLOGUE**

**2205 HOURS, 19 DECEMBER 2536 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**LOW ORBIT OVER SOL-VI (PLANET SATURN), SOL SYSTEM**

**ON BOARD UNSC **_**POINT OF NO RETURN**_

Six months hardly seemed like a long time to most people, while seeming interminably long to some others. For Captain Aaron Gibson, the last two months had been a mixture of both. At times, the minutes had stretched out into days, tearing the sanity from his mind. At other times, the hours and days had flown by so quickly, he was hardly aware if the last time he'd eaten was a day ago, a week ago, or even a month ago. All that he knew was that he could breathe easy in a few minutes. Either that or he could write a farewell note to his wife.

Months- no, years of preparation had gone into this. He was ready now. There was no turning back, especially not from this. He'd heard that only one person had ever crossed Vice Admiral Margaret O. Parangosky and survived, and while he was not doing this to become the second person to do so beside Catherine Elizabeth Halsey, the thought of edging himself into a strategic niche from which he could _not_ be dislodged appealed to him. After all, it had worked for James Ackerson. In all fairness, though, he mused, Ackerson was one slippery son-of-a-bitch. He could convince an ONI operative that shooting himself would defeat the Covenant off if he ever wanted to.

Gibson was not such a brilliant orator, but he did have the determination to see this through. Besides, one could never have too many cards in play.

The door in front of him opened, admitting him into 'Odin's Eye', the most secret and secure location in human-controlled space. Gibson remembered the last time he was here- it seemed fitting that on that occasion Spartans had also been the topic of conversation. Projects of that sort seemed to be taking up more and more of his time nowadays.

As he sat down in one of the sterilized metal chairs, the door behind him hissed open and into the room walked five people. Good. One of the things he hated most about meeting superior officers was that they never took their subordinates' time seriously- various admirals and variations thereof, whether rear or vice- had kept him waiting at least half a dozen times in as many years.

Four of the personnel in the room, though, were just there for show. Gibson would never dream of threatening, much less harming the room's final occupant. The quartet of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers in the room stood to attention and snapped off a salute when they saw Gibson, and then parted to allow the one they were guarding through.

Rear Admiral Ned Rich eyed Gibson apprehensively. It was the first time they'd seen each other since 2531, both having been on _Point of No Return_ for the birth of the SPARTAN-III program. The Rear Admiral did not look in the least bit happy. On the contrary- he looked positively livid. Gibson filed this away in his head, and promised himself he would never take a desk job working directly beneath Vice Admiral Parangosky.

The four ODSTs left, MA5B rifles at the ready. Despite Rich's bringing them here being a redundant security measure on the safest ship in the whole fleet, Gibson admired the troopers- fearless, dedicated, and a little crazy all at the same time- almost perfect soldiers, in other words. But then again, that was why he was here. Almost perfect wasn't good enough. No-one was. ONI had tried three times to make the perfect soldiers, but they had failed. The second and third attempts lacked the qualities of each other- if he got a shot, Gibson would get a chance to correct that. The fourth attempt would be unparalleled.

Rich sat down opposite Gibson. _Let the showdown begin_, Gibson thought. This might be interesting after all.

"What do you want, Captain? Do you know how hard it is to get off Earth when the old hag's in a bad mood? I had to fly subluminal the whole goddamned way- she's got her eye on every Slipspace-capable craft in-system."

Gibson raised an eyebrow. "Why not take _Charon's Twin_?" he asked, referring to the only other destroyer-sized prowler in the UNSC fleet, completed after the recruitment of Kurt-051 into the SPARTAN-III program. _Charon's Twin _was also stationed in the Sol system at Admiral Parangosky's personal request. Rich's answer, therefore, did not surprise Gibson.

"How do you think Parangosky's keeping tabs on all the jumps? And of course, you took the only other thing that could have gotten me here under the VA's nose." Rich took a glass on the table and filled it with water from the pitcher also resting on the table's surface. He took a heavy gulp, set the glass back down, and looked at Gibson. "So make your case, Captain, because I don't feel like wasting time."

Gibson smiled. He didn't want to waste time either. How convenient.

"The tablet, Rear Admiral, can explain things much more quickly than I can. If you would," Gibson said, gesturing towards a holographic-display tablet resting on the table.

Rich, with a skeptical look on his face, picked up the tablet. Within a minute of glancing at it, he practically slammed the device back down on the table. He then turned to Captain Gibson with an expression that could have indicated either disgust or trepidation.

"You must be joking, Captain. Spartans? You've dragged me onto this forsaken ship for the _second_ time in _five_ years to talk about Spartans? And you're doing this when the performance evaluation for Ackerson's _Spartan_ Alpha Company is due _next year_? I'm telling you, Captain, I have had it up to here," he made a 'cut' across past his temple, "with Spartans."

Gibson breathed deeply and silently- one of them had to keep a cool head. "Sir, I know you realize full well that there will always be attempts to improve on what has gone before. SPARTAN-II had its problems, and Ackerson wanted to resolve them his own way- a sequel. SPARTAN-III is not the magic bullet; even you can see that, sir. New Constantinople, Mamore, Bonanza- the SPARTAN-IIIs have shown critical flaws at each engagement- flaws that are mostly absent in SPARTAN-IIs. On the obverse, the S-IIs' weaknesses are absent in the S-IIIs. You see the problem- each has its own sphere, but there is nothing to cover the gaps."

Rich raised his eyebrow. Gibson pressed on before he could interrupt.

"Much as I hate to admit it, Ackerson was right- we need more Spartans. But we can't get more if they're going to be as effective as a smaller number of the older-generation Spartans- we can't sacrifice quality for numbers. I've looked at the specs for the S-III hardware- it's nothing compared to what the S-IIs are using- one hit with plasma on an SPI suit will kill the user- MJOLNIR performs much, much better. We need a middle ground between the two classes of Spartan- more numerous than the second generation, but with a longer lifespan than the third." Sweat was now pouring down Gibson's head, and the back of his throat was beginning to itch. He poured out a small glass of water for himself, downed the entire cup in one gulp, and continued to speak.

"Everything is lined up, sir. There are only one or two final hurdles to leap, and I need a few things to that end."

A furrow appeared in Rich's brow, and the Rear Admiral spoke. "What 'hurdles' are we talking about here, Captain?"

Gibson steeled himself. "Personnel. Facilities. Equipment. Candi-"

"Everything, in short, that the program cannot go ahead without."

Gibson stopped as though Rich had just struck him in the ribs. The momentum he'd been building crashed to a halt and died. He struggled to recover, but the Rear Admiral cut him off.

"I can give you everything you need, Captain, except one thing. Funding. Our resources were pushed when we funded Ackerson's little venture- what makes you think we can field the same number as Ackerson's Spartans with the same hardware as Halsey's? That simply isn't possible."

Gibson struck at his only chance. "It is, sir. I've made a few changes here and there to old equipment- limits cost compared to SPARTAN-II, and vastly increases projected survival rate compared to SPARTAN-III. Couple that to the improved augmentations Alpha Company used and we've got a group that will have fewer washouts than Halsey's, but at the same time can do the job just as well. This is the best of both worlds, and at a lesser expense than SPARTAN-II."

"But you incur a greater expense than SPARTAN-III. Where is the funding coming from, Gibson?"

"The Army isn't doing much. The Marine Corps is the one getting its ass kicked out in the Colonies. Strauss can't exactly say no- people would wonder why he needs the money, given that his branch is constrained to Earth."

Rich's eyes both widened- it was evident that he'd been surprised. "Nicholas- Strauss?"

Gibson made a serious face and looked at Rich directly. "The funding is no object- especially given the changes I've made to the equipment- especially the armor systems. Screen fourteen will explain."

Rich scrolled to the mentioned screen on his tablet and frowned as he scrutinised the readouts on the display. "MJOLNIR Mk. IV-" he paused momentarily- "IC variant?"

"Irregular Combat- it's not built for heavy combat as much as the standard Mk. IV, but better protective value than the SPI suit. And it's still quiet as a whisper, not to mention cheaper than its mainstream counterpart."

Rich cocked an eyebrow, and his eyes went down to the screen. "If the numbers I'm looking at here are correct, this _is_ the mainstream variant- we're not building 300 standard Mk. IV suits- you could basically consider the ones the SPARTAN-IIs are wearing an enhanced version of this."

Gibson simply nodded. There was no time to waste. "There are two other limitations, sir."

Rich actually broke into a smile at this. "Let me guess- your first problem is that you can't have a Spartan to train yours, and you don't have Frank Mendez."

"Yes, sir- all the Spartan-IIs are on combat tours, and at any rate, Ackerson took the one Spartan that would be best suited to training others. I've found a way around this, but I still need other instructors. I need DIs, specialists, weapons experts, and so on."

"Those can be dealt with- just tell me what your solution is. No-one is left of the crew who trained Halsey's Spartans save Mendez."

"I wouldn't say that, sir."

Gibson stood up and walked over to one wall, where a portable computer unit stood. Rich hadn't asked what it was- Gibson was sure that it was his bad mood that had contributed to his inattentiveness of objects standing in the room- never a good trait in a military officer, a member of ONI brass, no less. He shook his head to clear it- now was not the time to muse about his superiors. He booted up the unit, and a voice came through a speaker built into the terminal. The voice was female, as smooth as glass, without as much as a single imperfect inflection.

"Good evening, Rear Admiral Rich. Good evening, Captain Gibson."

Rich's turned to Gibson, his expression incredulous. "Is that-?"

"Déjà."

"You removed her from CASTLE Base? Do you _want_ me to serve your head on a platter to HIGHCOM? She isn't supposed to be-"

"Unlike smart AIs," Gibson said, cutting through Rich's sputter, "dumb AIs do not accumulate data feedback cycles based on the amount of data they have stored. While this limits their ability to expand the parameters of their knowledge, a limit that does not exist in smart AIs, dumb AIs can maintain their essential core processes indefinitely, giving them a theoretically infinite lifespan. You know that when AIs are duplicated any errors and feedback loops present in the original are duplicated into the new one, so it's impossible to lengthen the lifespan of a smart AI by copying it. This problem is non-existent in dumb AIs. _This_ duplicate is every bit as good as the original Déjà."

Rich looked dazed, as though he'd just been punched between the eyes. After several more moments, he recovered.

"Fine. I'll buy into this-for now. You're going for a class size of three hundred, like Ackerson's, but they're wearing MJOLNIR, like Halsey's. So where's the training location you had in mind? Onyx or Reach? Your preference may cement the association with one of the predecessor programs." The last sentence smacked of sarcasm. Gibson instantly hated it.

"Sir, I actually had a different location in mind. The last page has a list of possible locations, including the one which I think most ideal."

Rich glanced back down at his tablet, and looked straight back up towards Gibson inside of a second, who reflexively tensed, and attempted to mentally isolate all external sources of sound. It didn't work.

"HARVEST? You want to train these new Spartans on HARVEST? That is, without a doubt, the absolute most stupid idea I have EVER heard, Captain! Did you catch Boren's syndrome, or something?"

"Sir, please calm yourself. It is the best location for such a program. The Covenant fleet has already glassed it, so no more Covenant ships will come calling there. The UNSC has also vacated the sector surrounding Epsilon Indi, so the risk of discovery by Parangosky is minimal. You have my personal guarantee."

Rich stared at him skeptically for a moment- a guarantee from an ONI officer was basically worthless- before recommencing the attack. "And what do you do about the ships that mysteriously disappear for days into sectors that have already fallen to the Covenant?"

Gibson cleared his throat- Rich was playing right into his hands. "Screen thirty-one will elaborate." As Rich scrolled through his tablet, Gibson took another sip of water; his throat was parched.

"Project BROKEN WINDOW; a low-brow project initiated by the UNSC Science Corps for the purpose of ascertaining the ultimate usefulness of glassed planets- can we get them back, etc., etc. It's the perfect cover story if the vectors towards Harvest are discovered, which I very much doubt." Despite his parry of Rich's misgivings, Gibson began to feel nervous- he was starting to run out of counter-arguments.

For the first time, however, Rich actually seemed impressed. He leaned back in his chair and nodded towards Gibson. "Congratulations, Captain. You've actually secured my interest- the necessary personnel and equipment will be made available shortly, and you can begin selecting candidates immediately. Have you thought of a name for this project? SPARTAN-IV, perhaps?"

Gibson shook his head. "No, sir. I actually intended to model them after the SPARTAN-IIs, and that's how they'll be filed. They'll be the continuation of Halsey's project; proof positive that the next generation will surpass the first. They will be Class II of the SPARTAN-II program- the soldiers Halsey never got. She'd be so pleased if she knew- which of course, she will not."

Rich actually broke into a smile. "That is true." The smile did not last long, though. Rich got right back down to business. "But _also_ on the list of people who must NOT find out is-"

"Maggie Parangosky, I know," Gibson said, noting the look on Rich's face. "She will never find out, believe me."

"Well you'd better be _damned _believable, because I will _personally_ lead you to the gallows if she gets wind of it, do you hear me?"

"Crystal clear, sir."

"Then we're clear. I expect to see a report on your selections in six months' time. Dismissed, Captain."

"Sir, yes sir. Would you like a lift back to Earth?"

"Anything beats waiting two months flying the slow way here. Set course for Earth immediately, Captain."

"Yes, sir." Gibson stood up and strode over to the door of Odin's Eye. Opening it, he turned to Rich. "After you, sir."

Rich stood and went through the door, and three of the four ODSTs standing outside went with him. The fourth trooper stood back and turned to Gibson, snapping off a salute as he did so. "Is there anything you need, sir?" he asked, his face invisible through his polarized faceplate.

Gibson shook his head. "No, trooper. And you can stand at ease. You are free to leave with the Rear Admiral."

The trooper nodded and relaxed. "Sir, thank you sir," he said, before walking down the corridor after Rich.

Gibson shook his head and a wide smile broke out across his face. The UNSC would need more Spartans to replenish their losses- it would never know about its existence, but it would owe these three hundred its survival. It seemed odd how Ackerson had made that same case for his SPARTAN-IIIs.


	2. Chapter 1: Dawn of War

**CHAPTER 01**

**0433 HOURS, 17 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**ONI SITE SIERRA-22, CODENAME 'ZIGGURAT', PLANET HARVEST, EPSILON INDI SYSTEM**

David-294 put on the helmet that completed his MJOLNIR Mk. IV IC-variant armor and sealed the system. If a ship were to vent its atmosphere, he'd be safe- until the thirty minutes' air supply in his suit ran out, anyway. Air scrubbers could only do so much.

For the past six months, he and his team had been training with this armor- learning it, piece by piece, tactic by tactic. In an unprecedented move for any Spartan program, the customization of the suits by the Spartans themselves was actually permitted, allowing the Spartans to truly specialize in their team according to their role in the squad- and of course, according to personal taste. David was his team's close-quarters combat specialist, and his armor reflected that. His helmet was reinforced in several key areas to reduce vulnerability to head trauma, and the visor was not the usual wide visor on the MJOLNIR helmets, but more T-shaped, providing more protection to the sides of his face and only exposing his eyes, nose and mouth. The MJOLNIR's heavy plates did not cover his shoulders or knees- only the titanium bodysuit and underlying skinsuit protected these. This allowed for increased mobility in a close quarters fight, at the cost of a little protection.

He looked at the inside of the armory through his visor, gazing at the five other MJOLNIR suits in this particular room. The IC-variant was different from the original Mk. IV in that it was lighter and didn't offer such great protection- the thickness of the titanium in the outer plating had been reduced greatly, the result being that while still effective against ballistic weapons, the armor would not be able to take repeated hits with plasma. The motion-assisting circuits present in the original were present in a much-diluted form here, being utilized only to the extent so that the armor would not impede the wearer. The Class II SPARTAN-IIs would never be able to run as fast, jump as high, or hit as hard as their SPARTAN-II predecessors, but they still packed a mean punch. Some consolation that was. David wondered, had wondered for years now, just how well he and his comrades would stack up against the best of the best; it was a bitter pill to swallow knowing that it was their armor, the part of them that was least ingrained into their psyche, that separated Class-I from Class-II.

Perhaps the only two advantages the IC-variant armor had over the primary model were weight and power usage- between the hardware that was now absent and the reduced titanium usage, the MJOLNIR Mk. IV Irregular Combat-variant Powered Assault armor weighed a scant two hundred fifty kilograms- one half the weight of the regular Mk. IV. And with the simpler and lighter suit came reduced power usage- the fusion pods present in David's armor were a mere two-thirds of the size and had roughly half the output of the fusion pods present in the armor that John-117, the highest-ranking Spartan in the UNSC, wore.

David sighed heavily and walked out of the room, hearing the door _hiss_ shut behind him. He entered another room, this one just as important as the one he had just departed. He picked up an M90 shotgun and several dozen shells from a weapons rack and smiled- much better, he thought. No self-respecting CQB specialist could afford to not know how to use a shotgun, in his opinion. What was more, the M90s available to the Class-II Spartans were made with CQB in mind- ammo shortages and all. The butt of the weapon had a reinforced titanium brace, which was good for cracking the odd rock during training missions in the endless snowstorm which was outdoors on Harvest. David knew, though, that it might be necessary for it to break far less durable- and far more organic- things. And he couldn't wait. Throughout the seven years he and the two hundred eighty-nine other Class-II trainees had been training, they had received news about the state of the war from the crews of the supply ships that came to the base ever now and then, and they'd heard it all. Coral. Paris IV. Ballast. Jericho VII. They'd heard the news- billions dead, entire planets charred to barren globes of cracked crystal and rock, and the Covenant never seemed to stop for so much as a breath before moving onto the next human-occupied system. A little payback wouldn't hurt- not for him, anyway.

David slapped the shotgun onto a magnetic panel on his armor, crossed the room and pulled an MA5B assault rifle off a stand, along with several magazines. Despite the fact that he slapped the clip into the rifle with greater-than-human strength, causing vibrations through the gun that would rattle anyone else's bones, the sound was comforting to him- he felt somewhat more complete knowing he was fully armed. According to his studies under their AI instructor, Déjà, all Spartans had received such intensive training that they actually felt at a loss for something to do without a weapon to fire and an enemy to fire at. While Déjà had told them all that it would be unavoidable in any Spartan, the reason behind the lesson had been to alert the Class-II Spartans to this, so that they could consciously focus- restlessness and tension would only impede their judgment. Another component of Déjà's lessons to David and his generation had been to accept that sometimes they would simply have to wait, that Spartans would play their role in every battle, but they could not fill every role.

Despite his awareness of this, David still felt on edge every time he put his rifle and shotgun aside, as if something might strike just when he was least prepared. He honestly wondered whether it had been wise for Déjà to tell him and his fellow Spartans all this.

He double-checked all his armor's subsystems on his heads-up display, not wanting his armor to malfunction before he even saw heavy combat- a skilled soldier could who could defeat any opponent only needed to have something go wrong once before saying his prayers and lining his grave. Apparently, a Spartan, Samuel-034, had died on the first major anti-Covenant operation of the entire SPARTAN-II program because a shot from a Jackal's weapon punctured his MJOLNIR armor. Unable to exfiltrate the Covenant ship he and his team had been sent to destroy, he had been killed by the explosives his fellow Spartans had set.

A tap on the shoulder shook him from his thoughts. He turned to the sight of Sierra-336, the leader of Team Scavenger, and often the butt of jokes about her Spartan designation. Sierra's armor differed from his own, as per the customizations each Spartan had given their suit. Her armor was less angular than his, and the accompanying helmet featured a visor that was little more than a diamond-shaped horizontal slit, which was ironic when one considered that the helmet's optics systems was adapted for reconnaissance missions. Each armor plate was smaller than its counterpart on the standard armor, both to increase mobility at the joints and to decrease the suit's weight, however slightly.

"Hey, Two. You okay?"

David nodded, and then opened a nearby door to the great outdoors. Then again, he thought, it wasn't so great any more considering that he had looked outside to see nothing but ice and cracked rock for over seven years. He stepped outside, and despite the fact that the external temperature was a chilling negative twenty degrees Celsius, his suit's environmental controls ensured that his armor cooled almost insignificantly. He stepped out into Harvest's eternal winter, and Sierra followed, stepping up to his side.

"Hey- are you all right? You're awful quiet."

David shrugged. "It's- I guess it's just- weird. I mean- we're not coming back here. This'll be the last time we see it."

He could picture the grin on Sierra's face behind her visor as she said, "I know- it's great. Finally, I can wake up in the morning and not see snow. If I have so much as one more snowball tossed at me…" She let it hang at that.

David cleared his throat- it rarely saw much use. "So where are the others?"

"Three is cleaning the _Shadow_, of course… Four is sparring with Five, Five's probably given Four a black eye by now, and…" she tailed off, which made David more than a little nervous. They all knew the members of their own teams better than the backs of their own hands- that Sierra did not know where Hayden-401 was worried David. Then again, though…

At that moment, though, there was the shrill noise of a vehicle's engine, and out of nowhere, the silhouetted profile of an M274 Ultra-Light All-Terrain Vehicle, more commonly called a Mongoose, shot through the falling snow which always seemed to veil the background. Seated atop the two-man craft was another figure in MJOLNIR armor, which gave David and Sierra a nod before dismounting, causing the Mongoose to creak ominously.

"Six," said Sierra sternly, "where the hell have you been?"

"I was off talking to my Grunt buddies, how about you?" When Sierra did not respond- or even so much as move- Hayden started again. "I was killing time, that's all." He turned to David, but David could tell from his tone that Sierra was still the object of his words.

"But apparently, I didn't kill enough time. What's this? You're cheating on me now?"

That did it.

"Just because I happen to be next to him when you're off doing who-knows-what does NOT mean I'm getting together with him! And just because I have to yell at you every time you disappear does not mean WE are a couple!"

And with that, she turned around and stormed back into the Ziggurat, her footfalls making ominous _thuds_ against the metal floors. After several moments, Hayden shook his head.

"Really something, isn't she? Can't believe she was made team leader."

David cocked an eyebrow and looked Hayden full in the visor. Hayden was unusual for a Spartan- he did not show the emotional restraint typical of most Spartans, and showed an almost total disregard for rules. Strangely, that same disregard made him an inexplicably effective soldier- he was so unpredictable, he would not attempt anything that would elicit a recognizable counter, leaving his opponent at a loss to fight back against him, whether during sparring or during outdoor training sessions.

"David? You okay in there?" Hayden said, knocking on his faceplate to accentuate the point. Slightly annoyed now, David batted his teammate's hand away. "Look," he said, "we'll leave Harvest soon- can't you lay off her for a few hours?"

"My, aren't we getting protective?"

"Shut up. Besides- we can't let you out of our sight now. Déjà's got a final exercise for us, remember? Top honors and all that."

Hayden actually laughed. "Yeah- like that means anything. Either way, we still blow shit up, crack alien skulls. See what I mean? Doesn't matter."

David, in spite of Hayden, managed to crack a smile. "Don't tell me you'd pass up a chance to rub something in Ed's face."

"Forgot about that… all right then. I'll stick with you- for now." That was probably was as good as it was ever going to with Hayden.

At that moment, though, Sierra barked through SQUADCOM. "Team- briefing room. Five minutes. Have all gear ready." The channel then went dead.

Hayden scoffed. "Five minutes. That means we should have arrived while she was talking… come on, Tango Delta Sierra, we gotta go."

As they walked, David picked up the pace, drawing level with Hayden. "Tango Delta Sierra?" he asked.

"Tall, dark and silent, David. Man, what does Déjà teach you guys?"

"More than she teaches you…" David muttered under his breath.

They entered the Ziggurat's briefing room four minutes later, gaining the immediate attention of everyone in the room. Not only were the other four members of Fire Team Scavenger present, but so was a uniformed Navy officer and, to David's chagrin, Team Scavenger's rivals for top honors among the Class-II Spartans were also there. None of the other forty-six teams in Class-II could compete with them, and as much as David hated to admit it, Team Reaper deserved their spot at number one.

The Navy officer glanced down at an old-fashioned analog stop-clock, complete with chain. "Fifteen seconds early. Impressive, Three-Three-Six- even the latest of your team is on time."

Edward-160 coughed- David was sure he caught a hastily disguised "Sure!" in it.

The captain continued. "I realize that your instructor had an exercise planned for you, but a pressing matter has arisen, and your top-honors competition has been postponed indefinitely. The war needs Spartans, and it needs them now." He pocketed his watch just as a three-dimensional display of the surrounding sector popped into view above the round holographic projector located in the center of the room.

"205 Zeta Indi is a tiny star- the radiation and light signatures from it are regularly confused with Epsilon Indi, which is why we never really paid attention to it… until now, anyway."

The blue-tinged image of the cluster of stars comprising the sector around Epsilon Indi zoomed until one of the smaller stars, which David assumed to be 205 Zeta Indi, took up the majority of the space in the center of the room. A large number of small, dark-colored objects orbited the star.

"The star itself attracts no planetoids of any mentionable size; however, the asteroid belt here is rich in several rare elements that the Covenant uses in antigravity devices for its vehicles. Tracers placed on several Covenant ships have narrowed their location down to two asteroids in this entire system- they're the only ones with a large enough gravitational field and surface area to sustain mining operations."

"So you want one team to take out each asteroid," Sierra reasoned.

"No. The smaller of these asteroids has an unstable orbit- we theorize that its orbital decay will become exponential within several weeks, upon which point the surface will become simply too hot for mining ops. After a few more weeks, it will crash into the sun. Gravity is going to do our work for us on that one. The larger one, however…" the display zoomed in again until the image of a roughly potato-shaped rock loomed large enough for David to make out the individual buildings that likely comprised the Covenant mining complex.

"This asteroid has ninety-seven percent stability in its orbit, with a variation of only a few dozen kilometers between its perihelion and aphelion. In other words, it moves like clockwork. Therefore, we can safely insert you close to the complex without you having to march very far, and that means the complex can be destroyed that much faster. The reason we need two teams-" the view shrunk this time, but only slightly, "- is this."

A small green blip appeared and started moving slowly around the asteroid.

"We've picked up signals from a Covenant destroyer in orbit above the facility. As far as we can tell, that's the only defensive measure the Covenant has in place- obviously they thought this would remain undetected. We have to make sure that the operation is taken out before they decide to increase protection around it for whatever reason, so we'll be hitting them hard and fast, and more importantly, we'll be hitting them now."

Two smaller white blips appeared, one with a minuscule 'S' next to it, and the other with a tiny 'R'.

"Now here's the plan of attack- the UNSC _Fleet of Foot _will jump in-system, and deploy Team Scavenger in EVA Booster Frames and T-Packs to board and take out the Covenant ship. The ground op will begin _only_ when the destroyer is neutralized."

The white spot with the attached 'S' moved over the larger green blip, which disappeared.

"Team Reaper will them move down to the surface and take out their communications so they can't call for additional ship reinforcements." As the captain said this, the blip labeled with the 'R' moved over to a point on the surface of the asteroid, which was then marked with a large 'X'.

"Team Scavenger will then make their way down to the surface. There are two targets for you to neutralize- the mines, where the metal is extracted- and the refinery, where they process the products from the mines. Each team will place a FENRIS nuclear warhead at one of the sites and start the countdown timer. _Fleet of Foot _will then pick you up, and when you jump out-system, everything goes boom." The images on the 3D display dissolved, and the blue illumination the projector cast faded.

The Navy captain straightened and cleared his throat. "Any questions, Spartans?"

Sierra shook her head, and so did Edward, who led Team Reaper.

"Good. I want you ready to go in ten minutes- the rest of your comrades will be jumping out-system with the UNSC _Nautilus_. They're needed on Midas V. You twelve, however, will be taking a Pelican onto the _Fleet of Foot_. Dismissed."

Each of the Spartans acknowledged this last order, and immediately the room's occupants gathered in two clusters- the six members of Team Scavenger in one group, and the six Spartans of Reaper Team in the other. David glanced at those around him.

Jacob-257- Scavenger Three- stood at ease with his sniper rifle, with which he'd taken the liberty of painting jet black. He'd even named the weapon. _Shadow of Night_, he'd called it- fitting given its color, in David's opinion. With the exception of a flip-down optics unit above the visor on his helmet and the letters 'UNSC' painted in bright red on his left shoulder piece, Jacob's armor was completely standard.

Logan-196 leaned against the wall, taking the whole scene in. He was easily the physical dwarf of Team Scavenger at just under one hundred seventy centimeters in full MJOLNIR armor, but he made up for that with speed, which he had in abundance. Ever on the move, Scavenger Four co-occupied the position of close-quarters specialist with David himself, but favored the M7 submachine gun over the shotgun. Logan's armor was unusual in that multiple reinforced sheaths were incorporated into his front armguards, and these were never empty. Logan always wore his armor complete with no fewer than eight combat knives, which he was hardly inept at using.

Scavenger Five, also known as Celia-441, was the team's demolitions expert, but no slouch in close quarters either. Logan and Celia often sparred, Logan's speed and multiple pinpoint attacks being more often than not offset by Celia's timing and strength, and such sparring sessions would often end with her landing a single punch which would floor her squad mate. However, Celia preferred the use of an M19 SSM 'Jackhammer' missile launcher, and loved nothing more than hearing a big 'boom'. Her armor was slightly bulkier than that of all the others, with heavier plating and additional sections in various areas, giving her a slightly more menacing look considering that she topped out at almost exactly two meters tall, leaving her free to glance down at the rest of the team- and tower over the technical staff on the base.

Along with Hayden, Sierra and himself, these three Spartans comprised Team Scavenger. They constantly heckled, teased, and fought with each other, much to Sierra's vexation, but David would not have picked anyone else to fight or train with.

Sierra looked around at all of them, let out a small sigh, and spoke. "All right guys. We'll have gear and weapons on the ship, so no need to lug stuff around. Let's get moving." After a small pause, she added, almost as an afterthought, "Guys, I wanna say… well- I just- I'm really proud of- of us. Of you guys. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect team."

David could imagine the look on Hayden's face on the inside of his helmet, but kept the thought to himself. Scavenger made to leave the room, but they heard a voice call out- to one of them.

"Hey- Sierra!"

They all stopped in their tracks and turned to see who had called. Team Reaper- Edward-160, Joan-171, Saul-208, Ignatio-300, Laura-343 and Victor-404- stood opposite them, almost completely unmoving. Reaper and Scavenger had nurtured a rivalry for several years now, and it had only intensified when the MJOLNIR training phase began. David did not expect wishes of goodwill.

Edward nodded once, and said, "Good hunting." Unsure of what to do, David looked to Sierra, who called back, "You too." Scavenger then left the room.

* * *

A little less than half an hour later, David, along with the rest of Scavenger and Reaper, out of a sealed airlock chamber onto the UNSC _Fleet of Foot_. The room they were standing in was small to say the least- there was room for perhaps one Pelican here, two if they did not have to take off or land while on the ship. But Pelicans did not occupy the room they stood in.

Supported by suspension frames were six strangely-shaped vehicles. The seats and control area resembled that of a fighter, but without the enclosed cockpit- the pilot would need a pressure suit to fly this vehicle. Several large-nozzle thrusters extended out the back, and a stocky 'wing' protruded from each side. Two rotary repeating guns, similar in design to the M41 Light Anti-Aircraft Gun on Warthogs, were positioned at the base of each 'wing'. Most impressive, though, was a three-meter long single barreled gun running underneath the craft with multiple coils bracing it- a Gauss cannon, the miniaturized version of the ship-mounted Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, or MAC as it was called.

"I see you've spotted your insertion method," a voice from behind them called. Five of Scavenger turned to regard the newcomer, who was, as the captain who had briefed them had been, dressed in the uniform of a Navy officer. "Meet the OF-M92 EVA Booster Frame."

"I don't care what you call it," Hayden said, still looking at the six vehicles, "I think I'm in love."


	3. Chapter 2: High Orbit

**CHAPTER 02**

**0516 HOURS, 17 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**HIGH ORBIT OVER PLANET HARVEST, EPSILON INDI SYSTEM**

**ON BOARD UNSC **_**FLEET OF FOOT**_

"So, how long is the jump going to be?" David asked of no-one in particular.

"205 Zeta Indi is only two light-months away from Harvest- the jump's a really short one- maybe one or two hours at the outside," was Sierra's reply. When the room's other four occupants looked at her, she shrugged and said nonchalantly, "I spoke to the captain- as leaders of the operation, Edward and I had to report to the bridge first thing."

David nodded and checked his mission clock. It would be a while before they cleared Harvest's gravity well, and to wait through both the ascent and the Slipspace trip after that seemed a Herculean feat, even for Spartans. He'd trained for seven years on Harvest- woken up before the crack of dawn, given next to no time to prepare, thrown into bind after bind and expected to somehow get the best of the various obstacles in his way, be they the harsh weather, automated turrets firing rubber stun rounds, or all-too-angry drill instructors. He realized that he had come to expect situation after situation unfolding at a rapid pace- now, with nothing to look forward to for several hours, he wasn't sure what to do. He'd already triple-checked every single detail on his shotgun and the shells that were supposed to be loaded into it; his rifle stood in a corner, each of its magazines placed vertically one on top of the other with perfect precision when he'd attempted to alleviate his boredom. Yes, that was it, he thought. He was bored.

"Hey, has anyone seen Hayden?" he asked the room at large.

"What do you think?" came Logan's reply. "He's probably still laughing himself silly that we're taking those bike-things into space while Reaper gets a straight drop to the surface."

David shook his head. The Class-II Spartans were trained in almost every vehicle that could be conceivably piloted by Spartans, and somehow it had been decided that they would be introduced to a craft that they were not only untrained with, but totally unaware of. So be it. Adaptation was supposed to be human nature. Scavenger would fly as well as they could- but he didn't like it.

"I don't get that," Jacob said. "Couldn't we just T-pack over, or take drop pods?"

Sierra shook her head. "Unless you want to bounce off the shields trying to get in, I don't think so. The captain said some egghead would come down and brief us on our entry- supposedly they've got some special plan to get us into the ship."

"Yeah right," Jacob snorted. "Like a Gauss cannon would ever get through a destroyer's shields- even if we flew the damned things into the ship it wouldn't do anything."

From a lotus position on the floor of the room, Celia shrugged. "We could ask Hayden to try that out- not sure he'd mind committing suicide if he got to die while riding one of those things."

David smiled in spite of himself- not even Hayden was that reckless. Underneath the callous humor and never-ending defiance, Hayden could be counted on to come through for the rest of them. In seven years, not once had he abandoned them. He had always been there to assist and get the team out of trouble- in his own ways, of course. He wouldn't sacrifice his life if there was another less wasteful way of doing a job. Maybe that was why he was so unorthodox, David supposed. Maybe he simply thought of ways no-one had tried or accepted.

"What do you think, Two?" came Sierra's voice out of nowhere.

David shrugged noncommittally, and the rest of the team nodded in acceptance- his ambivalence was simply something they'd learned was a part of him, just like Hayden's tactics, and Jacob's perpetual attention to his sniper rifle, which he was now cleaning again for the third time that day. David was on the verge of asking the room a question again when Celia beat him to it.

"So what are we supposed to do once we get on the ship? Just start shooting?"

Sierra, now pacing the room like a restless cat, paused for a moment. "We're supposed to blow the main plasma reservoirs on the destroyer- without it; they've got no weapons and no fuel. We also have to knock out communications- that asteroid's not the only thing that could call for more ships. Captain said we should take out the bridge crew too, just in case they get any ideas."

"Why? It's not like they can kill us by venting the room- we've got internal pressure."

"Don't ask for trouble, Five- it'll find you soon enough."

"Yeah- like Elites can come up with new stuff. Covenant combat handbook- Rule One: Fight humans. Rule Two: If you can't beat 'em, glass 'em. I'm telling you, Sierra- they've got imaginations like rock crabs. Anyway, they'd doom half their crew if they vented the ship's atmosphere, and we'd be untouched."

"Unless they breached your suit, Cee," Logan countered. "How many times is someone gonna tell you the Chi Ceti story before you get it? This armor's good, but it's not perfect."

"Tell that to the guy who introduced us to the suit- I swear, the man sounded ready to marry it."

David joined the rest of the team in laughing. Although humor was a defense mechanism in Spartans, a way of shielding their emotions and keeping their minds keen, there were few occasions when it became an outlet for feeling rather than a screen. David sensed the irony of its double role, but didn't think too much of it- it was simply something he'd gotten used to.

Celia resumed her line of questioning. "So what do we use to take it out? I thought we only got one FENRIS."

Sierra nodded curtly. "We do- we're supposed to castrate the ship quietly with charges. No nukes- we don't want the Covies on the ground worrying until it's too late."

"So basically, keep Hayden in check until Reaper blows the coms?"

Sierra sighed. "In essence- yes."

None of them had heard the door _hiss_ as it opened.

"You know, that really hurts, boss. I'm the only weak link in this chain?" Hayden leant against the door frame, spinning his helmet on one finger, and then catching it after several seconds. "And here I thought I was your ace-in-the-hole…"

"If we need to blow a planet up, you'll be the first one we call, Hayden- we promise."

"Aw, thanks Logan. You always were my favorite. Anyway, when's this guy supposed to arrive and show us how to break onto the Covenant ship?"

David frowned and turned to Hayden. "You heard that?"

Hayden grinned widely and ran an armored hand through his close-cropped hair. "I wish I had- awesome as our new rides are, even I know that a Gauss gun won't cut it against shields. So I figured someone would tell us the way in."

"Well, you're right for once, Six." Sierra glanced down at a readout; her mission clock, by David's guess. "He should be here right now, actually."

The door slid open once more, and Hayden vacated the door frame to allow the newcomer in. David assumed that a two-meter tall obstacle suddenly moving could only be a relief to the stranger, who the light now showed to be an operative from the Office of Naval Intelligence. The man was of moderate height- or at least he would be to non-Spartans- and wore a black uniform with a white-and-black insignia on his lapel. His close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, iron-grey eyes and sharp features gave him the distinct appearance of having been carved from the ship's hull. When he spoke, Cole sensed an iron-fisted control in his voice; this man was obviously a master at masking- and displaying- emotion.

"Spartans," he said, "Captain Horner has ordered me to brief you on your upcoming mission before any potentially extenuating circumstances arise."

Before he could continue, a slight shudder announced the ship's entry into Slipstream space- arrival at 205 Zeta Indi was only a matter of time now.

The man in black continued. "As you have likely surmised, your booster frames do not have weaponry capable of breaching the destroyer's armor or shielding. As such, an alternate plan has been devised for your insertion. Yes?" he finished, seeing Hayden's hand was raised.

"Sorry to interrupt, _sir_," Hayden started, "but could we get your name? Before you go on, of course."

The officer blinked twice in rapid succession before recovering. "Junior Lieutenant Alexander Graves. And I know who you are, Petty Officer Spartan Four-Oh-One. Hayden, isn't it?"

The Spartan smiled and inclined his head, but did not otherwise look impressed. Distraction over, Graves spoke again.

"_Fleet of Foot _will exit Slipspace approximately twenty-thousand kilometers from the asteroid and the orbiting Covenant ship will full stealth protocols enabled- the Covenant will know something's happened, but they won't know what caused it. Command believes it is highly unlikely that the destroyer will break orbit to investigate an invisible ship transitioning in-system, especially if it does not emit a Cherenkov radiation signature- we won't be carrying nukes. We are basing your insertion on the assumption that the Covenant ship will remain in orbit."

A small pit formed in the back of David's gut- assumptions created whole new avenues of possibility for things to go wrong. As Spartans, he and his team had to be prepared for anything- they did not 'assume'.

"As this ship does not have a launch bay of its own, you will leave via the mine deployment hatch- it is the only portage that will admit vehicles the size of your booster frames. The asteroids are both frequent and large enough to block sensor signals, so the scanners on the destroyer can only potentially pick you up at extreme short range. We can't assume that the Covenant will dismiss a sensor reading, even something as small as the six of you- relatively speaking," he said, taking note of the size of each of Scavenger's members.

"Strange as it sounds, the Covenant actually rotates the guard down on the asteroid. Every sixteen hours, three Spirit transports rotate a small portion of the troops stationed groundside for troops on board the destroyer- the Covenant lower the shields protecting the hangar bay to allow the Spirits in. That, Spartans, is your entry window."

David blinked. Then he spoke. "And we're supposed to 'assume' they won't blast us out of the vacuum as soon as we enter weapons range?"

Graves was not fazed in the slightest. "They will not fire on the Spirits, and as such the dropships will be the only things keeping you safe from heavy fire. Make the Spirits the nucleus of your flight path and you need not worry about the destroyer. But you must stay close to them. Move too far ahead and the shields will still be up. The destroyer can attack at leisure. Move too late and you'll fall behind- the shields will have been brought back up, and I don't need to tell you what happens if you miss that window."

All of Scavenger nodded. They didn't need telling.

Logan spoke before Graves could continue. "So when are the Spirits ascending to the destroyer? Is it possible we've already missed the window?"

Graves shook his head, his expression unchanged. "A Black Widow recon satellite has been transmitting rotation times for over a week now- we're dead certain, and we timed our jump from Harvest to fit the schedule. We're dropping into the system a full hour before the Spirits are supposed to move up to the orbiting ship- even accounting for timing anomalies thanks to our journey through Slipspace, or if we have delays in your deployment, we'll be there early. There's no way for you to miss the window."

Sierra nodded on Scavenger's behalf, then asked, "Is that all?"

"No. Once your sabotage of the destroyer is complete, you are to transit to the surface of the asteroid using you booster frames, if possible. And if it is not possible, there's a reason you weren't ordered to destroy the Covenant escape pods."

Hayden's smile was so wide it was infectious. David felt his lip curl, and fought the temptation to chuckle, even a little. The lieutenant didn't seem so happy.

"One more thing. Your extraction method is a Black Cat subprowler we inserted roughly equidistant from each Covenant facility on the surface- one klick north of the refinery and one klick south of the mine, in other words."

"Whoa- how did we get it down there?"

"While we are losing precious time, Chief Three-Three-Six, I will indulge you. The subprowler was dropped out of Slipspace near the asteroid when the destroyer _Charon's Twin_ crossed through the system. While-"

"_Charon's Twin_? That's a destroyer? I've never heard of it."

"Very few have, Four-Oh-One. It's a ship under the direct command of ONI brass."

"I thought ONI only had prowlers- what's the deal?"

Graves clenched his teeth. "The _deal_, _Petty Officer_, is that it does not matter now what ships ONI has on its roster. What _does_ matter is that you know how you are getting onto and off of that asteroid. Am I clear?"

Hayden made a movement that might have been either a shrug or an extremely half-hearted nod. It was Sierra that cleared things up. "Yes, sir," she said calmly.

"Good. Now get ready- ETA to 205 Zeta Indi is eighty minutes, and it's better to be early than late."

Hayden's grin grew wider. "Better late than never."

For the first time, Graves smiled. "Not always, Petty Officer. As you were."

And with that, he left. The door hissed shut behind him.

Hayden looked back towards the rest of the team. "Anyone get the feeling this whole thing is half-assed?"

Celia nodded. "At least you're happy- improv's your thing, isn't it?

David got the distinct feeling that Hayden only put his helmet on at that point so Celia couldn't see his grin.

* * *

"Commencing final check on booster frame systems. Scavenger Team, check in."

"This is Scavenger One."

"Two."

"Scavenger Three here."

"Number Four."

"Scavenger Five- coms are a-okay."

"Six- ditto that."

_And so it begins,_ David thought. _Our first op. We're part of the war now._

"Power systems."

"This is Scavenger One- fusion reactor is green."

"Two- all systems have power."

"Same here."

"Reactor's ready."

"Check that."

"Power's ready- can we just launch already?"

David rolled his eyes at Hayden's comment. Even though odds were that nothing was wrong with their equipment, it was always better to be sure. In any case, deck officers apparently loved protocol.

"Thrusters."

"Scavenger One- all green."

"Two; ready to fly."

"Three is good to go."

"Four- lights are green."

"This is Five- everything looks okay."

Silence.

"Scavenger Six, check in. I repeat, Scavenger Six, check in."

"Only if we'll skip the rest of them- they're all green anyway, so what's the point of all these checks?"

"Hayden- just check in already," a different voice said.

"No, Sierra! You know all your systems are fine, and mine are too, and so are the rest of the team's! We're just wasting time here!"

"Just check in, damn it!"

Hayden's voice could have frozen nitrogen.

"Scavenger Six acknowledges green lights across the board- don't expect another peep out of me."

There was an icy silence. Then a voice- David recognized it as Jacob's- broke through the pall.

"He's got a point. Scavenger Three here- all systems are set."

"Scavenger Four- I'm for that. Acknowledging; all systems are green to go."

"Five; same here."

Another silence settled across TEAMCOM. Not one of the Spartans mounted on the booster frames looked at each other.

"This is Spartan Three-Three-Six, designation Scavenger One. All systems report back green. Scavenger Team is set for insertion."

"Copy that, Scavenger One. Deploy frames in three… two… one… mark."

The hatch that typically deployed the prowler's complement of HORNET nuclear mines opened, and as the last vestiges of the deployment bay's unvented atmosphere streamed out into space, so did Scavenger's booster frames. The last thing David heard as he exited the ship was the scream of the thrusters before the vacuum quashed all sound. In complete silence, the six vehicles moving through the asteroid field streaked between asteroids of various sizes, ranging from smaller bodies only several dozen meters long to larger ones which, in David's opinion, could potentially pass as planets if they had been a little larger. What struck David the most was the emptiness of the field- he had hardly expected to evade projectiles from every directed, but still…

"Approaching edge of short-range weapon and scanner range- halt here, team."

David winked his green acknowledgment light, welcoming the solitary _beep_ against the all-consuming silence. He welcomed any noise in this noiseless space besides that of his own breathing, which sounded unusually loud inside his helmet. He had to deliberately slow his breathing several times in order to avoid hyperventilation- that and depleting his limited air supply too quickly.

He'd remembered hearing something to this effect back on Harvest in his lessons with Déjà- Spartans were the best ground asset that could possibly be deployed. They excelled in surface operations, and while it was impossible for any soldier to be completely calm about fighting insurmountable odds, Spartans were about as close as anyone could possibly be in such situations. In space, however, where their skill did not factor as much, Spartans were almost continually on edge. In space, there was no fallback position, no cover from heavy weapons, and no option of melee. If munitions ran out, they were dead. Worst, according to Déjà, had been engagements between large ships, when Spartans had nothing to do in the combat at all. Then the anxiety about being unable to apply themselves would combine with the traditional Spartan dislike of inactivity to form restlessness and cases of frazzled nerves- something which almost never occurred otherwise in Spartans. No, not almost. They _never_ occurred otherwise in Spartans.

"David- adjust your course or you'll be in the open."

David shook his head and adjusted the thruster controls on his booster frame, drifting slightly off to the left, which took him behind a particularly large asteroid- and removing line of sight to the target. Something had caught his eye, though.

"Scavenger, this is Two. I think I saw something- permission to confirm sighting."

After a two-second pause, Sierra spoke back through TEAMCOM.

"Fine, but for heaven's sake, make it fast, Two."

David nodded and made slight changes to the thruster output on his booster frame. He rose, little by little, until he peered over the horizon created by the asteroid directly in front of them. In spite of himself, his eyes widened. After looking for several seconds, he flew his frame back down and clicked his com onto an open channel.

"_Fleet of Foot,_ Sierra, this is Scavenger Two. Scrap the old plan."

"What? What is it, David?"

"Covenant ships in orbit."

"So?"

"Covenant _ships_ in orbit."

David wasn't sure how else to say he had seen no fewer than three Covenant destroyers in orbit over the asteroid.


	4. Chapter 3: Belly of the Beast

**CHAPTER 03**

**0735 HOURS, 17 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**ASTEROID FIELD, 205 ZETA INDI SYSTEM**

"Are the Spirits still coming?" David asked through TEAMCOM.

"Still ten minutes until they move up from the asteroid," Graves told the team. "Stand by."

David nodded and made an effort slow his breathing, taking a small amount of satisfaction when TEAMBIO showed his heart rate and blood pressure decreasing slightly. After several more minutes, his pulse had slowed and he felt calmer. Good. His head was clear; it would have to be.

"Sixty seconds until the Spirits are visible."

"Understood, Scavenger One. You'll need to take out all of the warships before Reaper can be deployed. Prepare to move."

"Forty-five seconds. Scavenger, perform one final check on your booster subsystems- no good if you short out now."

David didn't even bother- the lights had been green for the past thirteen minutes- there was no way they were going to change all of a sudden without any cause. Glancing left and right though, he saw Logan, Celia and Sierra checking their instruments. Jacob was, of all things, checking the chamber on _Shadow of Night_ again. Hayden simply stared straight ahead into the rocky asteroid right in front of them. Sierra straightened slightly.

"Thirty seconds."

David checked his suit integrity one last time, just to be sure. If the slightest hole opened up in his suit, it would take anywhere from less than a second to over a minute for the depressurization and temperature to kill him. One way or another, he wouldn't make it if a breach occurred.

"Twenty seconds."

David blinked and inhaled deeply- he only just realized that he'd been breathing more quickly in the past few seconds. Closing his eyes, he swallowed gently. But not gently enough.

"David- you all right?" It was Jacob.

He cleared his throat. "I'm fine. Throat's just dry."

"Should have hydrated before the op, Two. We'll deal with that when we don't have a timer running. Ten seconds. Here we go, Spartans."

_Yes,_ David thought. _Here we go._ The six Spartans rose ever so slightly in their booster frames, edging up until the asteroid and the Covenant ships appeared in their field of vision.

"Five… four… three… two… one… here they come. That's- different…"

It wasn't three Spirit dropships that ascended from the surface. Twelve vessels with U-shaped hulls and glowing fields of blue energy stretching between the elongated portions rose from the asteroid's surface and moved with inexorable pace towards the ships.

David clicked his com once. "Window's open. Let's move."

"Took the words right out of my mouth, Two. Scavenger, go."

As David felt the acceleration from his booster frame pull him back in his seat, the frames of the other members of Scavenger shifted and moved relative to him. They were flying in coordination with one another- not in a simple formation. The arrangement shifted and flowed like a flock of birds, each ready to move on their own vector at a moment's notice, but still graceful in relation to the rest, still complementing each other's movements.

As they closed in on the dropships and destroyers, several points on the larger vessels moved- and began to glow.

"They're charging weapons…" Celia warned.

"Relax, Cee. This'll be just like Harvest. We can just lose 'em in the storm…"

"Of what, Hayden? Sarcasm?"

"I was thinking Spirits, but suit yourself."

Brilliant balls of blue streaked from the Covenant ships, leaving similarly-colored trails in their wake. Scavenger broke the tight flying formation they'd been in, but remained synchronized in their movement. The guided plasma tracked them, weaving and winding as if mimicking their exact flight pattern with a single second's delay. But it was to no avail; after several more seconds of flying, Scavenger caught up with the Spirit dropships.

"All right team, let's lose that plasma- but don't blow too many of the Spirits- we need them to let us in."

"Best idea you've had all day, Sierra." Hayden immediately broke off from the group and weaved back and forth between the Spirits, the plasma torpedoes on his tail looking like tired birds in comparison.

"Scavenger! Break formation!" Sierra yelled into TEAMCOM, and the team did so, winding and turning among the formation of Spirits. It was fairly obvious the tracking plasma had to be manually guided, as every so often the plasma projectiles made slight twitches and deviations in their flight path that would not happen if the plasma's guidance had been automated. After several minutes of evading the plasma-

"Yeah! Take that, split-faces!" Hayden whooped as one of the balls of plasma collided, quite by accident, with one of the Spirits, incinerating the dropship without much ado. As if a switch had been flipped, the Covenant destroyers ceased fire- it didn't take a genius to figure out that even the Covenant did not appreciate friendly fire. The Spirits did not open fire with their cannons either- the risks were too apparent. Despite the lack of enemy fire, Scavenger did not fly in a straight line- they weren't going to give the Covenant a chance to open fire again. They continually weaved and shifted between the Spirits, never giving the Covenant destroyers or the Spirits a clear line of fire.

"Should be peaceful from here on in," Celia commented.

"Don't get too comfortable, Five- they're probably assembling a security detail in the hangar bays, which is one of two things they could do right now," Sierra replied calmly.

"Welcoming committee, huh? I like it." David could practically see Hayden's smile.

The Spirits split up, with several moving towards the hangar bay of each destroyer.

"Sierra?" David asked.

"Straight ahead, Two. Use the cover, even if it is reduced."

"Copy that."

Scavenger compressed their flight paths, limiting their maneuvers into a smaller volume now that they only had three Spirits to cover them. After several more seconds-

"Seraphs!" Logan called.

"What'd you expect? Flying Grunts?"

"All right; Four, Six- cut the chatter. Our LAAGs are no good against Seraphs, and we've only got one Gauss shot each, so avoid firing if possible- and if you have to shoot, make it count."

"Copy that, Sierra."

"Roger, boss. Ready to kick some serious butt."

"Stay close to the Spirits! It'll keep their trigger fingers up a little longer…"

The four insect-like Seraph fighters rolled and angled around the cluster of Spirits, trying to get a clean shot at one of Scavenger's booster frames, but the Spartans continually shifted their position, denying the enemy any opportunity to end the mission prematurely. Despite the commotion about them, the Spirit dropships continued to plow resolutely on towards the destroyer, prompting a remark from Jacob.

"Idiots," he growled. "If these were Pelicans, they'd have pulled out of the run by now…"

"Rock crabs…" Celia reminded gently.

"Focus!" Sierra yelled.

Scavenger continued to juke and jink, trying to remain evasive, biding their time as the Covenant Spirits moved along their planned route, seemingly oblivious to the Spartans, as they did not maneuver or open fire. Even as he maneuvered, David saw in the TEAMBIO readouts that the entire team's pulse rates were slowly rising- this tension was not good for them. The more worked up they got; the higher the chances were that they would slip up. And it only took one mistake for all hell to break loose. He felt a drop of sweat coalesce on his face; in the weightless environment of space, the tiny ball of water did not slide down his cheek as it might have done if he'd been back on Harvest. Instead, it simply sat there just off his right eyebrow, giving him the mounting temptation to wipe it away, which he might have done if the helmet on his head wasn't the only reason he wasn't currently sucking on vacuum. Again, he slowed and deepened his breathing, taking a slight comfort in the sound ringing in his ears.

The lead Spirit dropship approached the destroyer, and the hangar bay opened up to admit the vessel. Something went off in David's mind- he couldn't quite place it, but it had something to do with what happened next.

"NOW!" Sierra yelled across TEAMCOM.

David leaned forward and accelerated. Like six Gauss rounds, Team Scavenger's booster frames streaked forward into the hangar bay of the destroyer, which now gaped open. Time seemed to simultaneously crawl and race for David- in reality; only several seconds separated his initial acceleration and his entrance, but David felt like he had an eon to work out one crucial fact- that he was moving at hypersonic speed towards a wall. Free of prompt, David cut the power to the primary thrusters and slammed the control to the braking jets. The sudden deceleration launched him forward in his seat and caused the steering apparatus to crack underneath his sudden motion. Despite his action, the vehicle continued to rocket towards the wall. Taking the precious half-second the braking had bought him, David leapt from his booster frame and tucked his arms and legs, going into a roll as he hit the floor and came up standing. A thunderous _crash_ signaled the end of his booster frame- he'd have to find another way down to the surface.

He checked the readouts on his heads-up display, nothing that his pressure sensors still read zero. The Covenant hadn't reset the shields over the hangar bay yet, and as such there was no atmosphere in the room. His suit's air cycling capabilities had been supplemented by an additional unit attached to his booster frame, so he hadn't used up all of his suit's air in the flight. He still had twenty-eight minutes of air left- more than enough.

David ran over to a console that stood by a closed door and hit the only switch present, opening the doors.

As the door rushed open, a blast of air hit David with the force of a sledgehammer as the ship's internal atmosphere began to vent. He was forced back, but grabbed onto the edge of the door's control panel before he could move too far, catching hold by the very tips of his fingers. He grunted as gale-force winds rushed past him, carrying the odd Grunt or unsuspecting Elite into the spacious hangar bay- and into the vacuum.

After several seconds of trying to secure his grip against the howling rush of atmosphere, a deafening grinding sound pierced his eardrums as massive metal alloy doors finally closed the breach. At the same time, the door David had opened slammed shut, and a faint hissing noise from somewhere above him signaled that the hangar was being repressurized. He got to his feet and pulled his M90 shotgun out, surveying the scene. What was once his booster frame was completely gone, and was likely hurtling towards the asteroid below the ship by now. The rest of Team Scavenger, boosters and all, were resting on the hangar bay floor, next to the remains of a Spirit dropship. Much of the metal on the Spirit was blackened, and small fires still burned here and there.

David walked over to the rest of his team, noting with some satisfaction that not one of them seemed hurt. He also took relief when he heard the _clink-clink_ his boots made against the metal floor- the complete silence of space had unnerved him, to say the least.

"Emergency doors? Why didn't they just turn on the shields?" Logan asked of no-one in particular.

Sierra shook her head. "Don't know- someone on the command bridge must have panicked."

"Sloppy," Jacob remarked. "If this had been a UNSC ship, the AI would have sealed the breaches before they ever became a problem."

David nodded his assent- boarders had obviously not been expected, although it puzzled him why the Covenant hadn't prepared for their arrival. UNSC ships had been boarded only sparingly by the Covenant, who generally favored obliteration, but the correct protocols were always ready to be initiated if necessary, whether or not the ship was likely to be boarded.

Sierra pulled back the bolt of her MA5B rifle and turned to the rest of the team. "All set?"

Five acknowledgement lights blinked green.

The six Spartans went through the recently opened door, which was shut again. Seeing no need for carnage right away, Scavenger used the more control console located by the door- 'the easy way', as Hayden termed it. Once on the other side, they immediately took up position around Celia, who pulled a small object with multiple metallic 'petals' out of her pack. Within two seconds, the team was on the move again.

"Settings?" Hayden asked.

"Proximity and motion," Celia replied as she touched a small red button attached to the top of her gauntlet. "If that door opens, the LOTUS goes up."

The team advanced in silence for several more minutes, until-

"Damn," Logan muttered. "Three doors. Which one do we not take?"

Sierra paused for a moment, thinking. "We take the one in the center, see if that leads us to the bridge."

"What about the engines? Coms?"

"We won't take out all three ships on our own, so we'll commandeer this one and see if we can't take out the other two."

Hayden turned to Sierra. "Who are you, and what have you done with Sierra?" The response to his flippancy was a punch to the shoulder, which Hayden didn't seem perturbed by.

The door directly in front of them didn't open, though. To their left, a hissing noise revealed a corridor- complete with half a dozen Elites and twice as many Grunts. The air seemed to vibrate as their charging weapons emitted telltale whines.

Without a second thought, David primed all three of his fragmentation grenades and tossed them into the corridor. Hayden and Sierra rushed forward and took firing positions on one knee while Jacob fell back. Logan slammed the door control, sending it swooshing shut just as dull _thumps_ reverberated through the walls and floor. Nothing moved for several moments.

Logan put his hand to the door control console again, and at a nod from Sierra, pressed the control. David was immediately taken aback at what three grenades had done. Three blackened rings in the floor marked the spot where the grenades had detonated. The bodies of Elites and Grunts littered the corridor, islands of armor and flesh in a slowly-spreading sea of multicolored blood. The Elites' personal body shields had clearly taken the brunt of the blast; tiny metal shards from the grenades glinted in the blue-white light of the destroyer's interior. The Elite warriors had relatively few embedded in them- the Grunts were another story altogether.

"All clear," Hayden reported.

Logan sealed and locked the door leading down the corridor, and once again activated the holographic control that would open the central doorway.

After several more minutes of travel through unnervingly empty passages, the team arrived at a cavernous room filled with Covenant aliens. Silently, each readied their weapon, but a 'Stop' gesture from Sierra held their trigger fingers in check.

Only two Elites stood in the room, and no Grunts or Jackals whatsoever were present. However, dozens of bizarre aliens floated back and forth between various instruments and displays, extending delicate filaments from their bulbous forms as the consoles pulsed and glowed in a multicolored display.

"Where the hell are we?" Jacob whispered. Being the team's sniper, he had the quietest voice of everyone in Scavenger- David had to strain to hear it, even with the audio-enhancing components in his helmet.

"We're in the ship's nose- sensor suite, probably," was Sierra's equally silent response. "Hold up- I've got an idea. We take out those Elites- quietly."

Five acknowledgement lights lit up. Scavenger crept up to the Elites, making less noise than a slight breeze. Hayden, David and Sierra moved towards one that stood towards the right, while Logan, Jacob and Celia took up the left. Both of the Elites were clad in red-grey body armor, and while this rung a bell in the back of David's head, he brushed it aside. It didn't matter what rank or affiliation these Elites had; they had to die for the mission to succeed, and that was all that mattered.

When they were two meters from the Elite, Hayden and David leapt forward and tackled the Elite's legs, sending it tumbling to the floor in a heap. Sierra then pounced on its back and drew a razor-thin line across its throat with her combat knife, immediately ending the warrior's life. Several meters away, a _thud_ accompanied by a wet _slick_ told a similar story for the other Elite.

David rose and pulled his assault rifle out, although he honestly wondered if he'd have to use it, given that the floating aliens did not seem the least bit alarmed or even aware of the fight that had just taken place. True, some did stop and observe the aftermath for several seconds, but most simply continued to work on the instruments.

"What's up with those things?" Hayden asked, going so far as to walk up to one of the creatures and prodding it with his M7 submachine-gun. The thing's large black eyes opened wide and it trilled loudly, although to David it seemed more out of irritation than alarm. Nonetheless, he leveled his rifle at it, only lowering it when Sierra looked his way and shook her head.

"If they wanted to hurt us or trip an alarm, they'd have done so. I think they're neutral- they just work these instruments. I doubt they even care which side they're on."

Hayden snorted. "Yeah, they're so indifferent they'd side with an alliance of genocidal alien fanatics. And what's to say these things don't control plasma cannons somewhere on the ship that's going to fry us? I say we pop them right here."

David half-expected Sierra to shoot Hayden on the spot. Instead, she sighed and opened the TEAMCOM channel.

"Dead end. We have to find the ship's bridge, and this isn't it."

"Any ideas on where that might be?"

"If it's not in the nose, Four, then it's in the center of the ship. We should have checked there first… should have known the 'Prophets' had no stomach for a fight." She tweaked the ammo counter on her MA5B for a second, and headed straight out of the room, Logan, Celia and Jacob hot on her heels. David made to leave as well, but Hayden grasped him by the shoulder and whispered, with TEAMCOM off, "Are you kidding?"

"They don't look hostile, Hayden. I think we're fine."

Both of them left the room at that point, but David was fairly certain that Hayden looked back several times. It was strange to see him so paranoid; but then again, they _were_ on board a Covenant warship.

As they moved through the bowels of the Covenant ship, David couldn't help but notice the interior's layout. The high, arching corridors and passages were a good five meters tall and several meters wide- a waste, he thought. Not only did it make key points of the ship harder to effectively defend against boarders, but it also used up more resources- resources that had the UNSC possessed them, would never have been taken for granted. A cloud passed over his face as he considered the one resource humanity _did _seem to take for granted, and tried hard not to lump himself into that category.

Far too many lives had been thrown away in this war. It was not simply the dead and the maimed, or those marked out for such fates; it was those who were meant to survive- those trained- no, those _made_ for survival. Even as he heard his footsteps alongside those of his team, he considered the future. Even if they survived the war- even if they somehow _won_, what was next for the Spartans? They would never, _could_ never fit into society. Even Class II, less of a stretch than the original Spartan-IIs, was simply different from humanity as a whole. David and his fellow Spartans could punch holes in sheet metal, reach speeds that made professional athletes look like toddlers, and ascertain the eye color of a Marine two hundred yards away with the naked eye. What could they do if they ever lived through this war?

David shook his head- there was time enough for that if he ever survived. As one of the more accommodating DIs had put it, he'd 'cross the bridge when he got to it', or some variation of that. Colloquialisms had never been a strong point in Spartans.

In the meantime, Scavenger had arrived outside another security door. Sierra sighed in frustration, while Logan went the extra mile and actually aimed a kick at the solid metal door, sending a series of resonant echoing _clangs_ reverberating down the corridor. David nodded towards Jacob, and the two Spartans took up rear-facing positions. If Sierra and the others needed time to open that door, he and Jacob would give them all the time they needed- short of trying to hold up Hunters.

Unexpectedly, the door chimed once and slid open. Perplexed by his team's unusual speed and silence, but determined not to look the gift horse in the mouth, David turned around. The smile he had been wearing left his face as Scavenger came face to face with two Covenant Hunter pairs. A sickly green glow suffused the room as four fuel rod cannons charged up.


	5. Chapter 4: Take the Wheel

Author's note: Sorry it's been so long, folks- I didn't realize it's been two months since I last updated this story. Sorry if I left anyone hanging. Anyway- enjoy.

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* * *

CHAPTER 04**

**0758 HOURS, 17 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**HIGH ORBIT OVER ASTEROID M6-17, 205 ZETA INDI SYSTEM**

**ABOARD COVENANT DESTROYER **_**RIGHTEOUS INTENT**_

David dove to the floor, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck strain against the inside of his MJOLNIR armor's bodysuit as the four lines of energy streaked through the middle of the corridor, striking- nothing. Every member of Scavenger was braced against either a wall or the floor, and they wasted no time in getting up as thunderous _booms_ sounded from the wall where the passage behind them wound to the left.

David sprang to his feet and closed with the nearest Hunter, not even bothering to go for his rifle, which would be next to useless against the armored behemoth. He charged it just as it swung its massive two-ton metal shield horizontally at him, holding his arms forward and bracing for impact. He caught the shield mid-swing, but the two ton mass was both much heavier and moving much faster than he was. His momentum simply wasn't enough.

He moved backwards with the shield, letting go when the motion overbalanced him and sent him staggering back. As the Hunter took its turn to charge, he planted his right foot and made as if to try and halt the thing's attack. As five tons of armored Hunter barreled towards him, he pivoted back on his right foot and sidestepped the charge entirely. Yanking his M90 shotgun off the magnetic panel on his back, he sprang forward and squeezed the trigger as fast as his tendons would pull, feeling the successive _bangs_ course through his arms as the shotgun discharged. The Hunter, though, surprised him. It swung its shield-bearing arm around with incredible speed that defied the behemoth's size. David's half-dozen shots pinged harmlessly off its shield. The Hunter followed up with a swipe with its cannon arm, and David, despite holding his M90 out to block it, was knocked clean off his feet.

Before he could recover, a green glow from the periphery of his vision told him what was coming. He rolled into a crouch and poised himself to spring, but before he could, an overpressure wave drove him onto the floor with a _clang_ before doubling in strength and hurling him backwards. As he came to a halt, David growled- he was a Spartan, _not_ a rag doll in a windstorm.

As David righted himself and tried to get his bearings, something struck him as odd. He shouldn't have survived. A point-blank shot from a fuel rod gun should have reduced him to a cinder and turned his armor into a molten puddle. He turned to look at the Hunter that had shot him- or the Hunter he thought had shot him.

The three and a half meter tall Hunter was a sight indeed. Its heavy armor and shield were scorched jet black, and it dripped orange blood from its soft midsection and head. Moreover, there was slackness in its limbs, and slowness in its movements- if anything, it looked like the Hunter had been hit by a stray shot from one of its comrades. Not wasting a second, David thundered towards the disoriented Hunter and plunged a fist into its underside.

Even through the titanium-layered undersuit, David could feel the warmth and pressure of the Hunter's innards around his outstretched hand. Every centimeter of his fingers felt pinpricks of sensation, including movement _inside_ the Hunter. As both David and the Hunter stood there, frozen by the strangeness of his move, a loud, wet _squelch_ indicated movement from the area where David's hand was now engulfed. It was a moment before he realized that his fingers weren't moving, and neither was the rest of the Hunter.

The Hunter twisted and flailed, trying to distance itself from the Spartan. David in turn clenched his fingers and heaved, tearing dozens of long, sinuous orange strands from the Hunter's midsection. The Hunter shrieked in pain, sending a thousand needles of sound directly into David's eardrums, but he didn't care. Spartan and Hunter closed in on each other, neither bothering to aim a weapon. David sprang up just as the Hunter swung its shield, vaulting over the its head and slipping his combat knife out of a thigh sheath as he did so. As the Hunter paused for the single moment he was out of sight, David drove his combat knife into its abdomen, then swept the short blade to his left before plunging it in again, all the while sending gouts of dark orange blood spewing to the floor of the Covenant ship.

David did not pause with his initial victory, proceeding to systematically disembowel the Hunter with equal parts blade and fist, never letting up for a single second. The huge warrior continued to grow slower and more sluggish, the margins by which it missed its attacks on him growing with each swing. All around them, the sounds of close-quarters combat sounded deafeningly, but David didn't care- for now, only he and his opponent existed. Then, finally, as David took a moment to steady himself, the Hunter simply collapsed, still bleeding orange-brown fluid.

His breathing haggard, David walked over to the now-still corpse and drew his combat knife from the Hunter's midsection with a wet _squelch_. As he picked up his shotgun and was satisfied with its condition, he looked around at the four wet Hunter corpses and sighed, making sure that the external sound system was off. With the commotion Scavenger had created, stealth could no longer be counted on- and neither could time. So much for doing things quietly.

The team set off at a full sprint, not caring if they were seen- it simply wouldn't matter at this point. As they raced through the bowels of the ship, they heard the hoots and yips of Grunts mingled with the growls and roars of their Elite commanders, a chaotic din that echoed down the corridors after the six Spartans. At last, Scavenger came to a door that was elaborate even by Covenant standards. Easily ten meters high and that same amount wide, its five interlocking sections were joined by a large circular seal the size of a MJOLNIR chestpiece.

Sierra turned to Celia. "Breach it- we'll cover you." Celia nodded curtly before advancing to the door and pulling equipment out of her pack. As David turned to face the oncoming Covenant, he noted that she had pulled out not just the standard C-12 foaming explosive, but also a length of thermite det cord- knowing Celia, anyone on the bridge would be in for a very rude greeting.

"I'll need one minute to set up," Celia called from behind them.

Logan chuckled darkly. "At least give us a challenge, Cee."

"How about I give you a black eye, _then_ you cover my ass?"

Logan's reply was interrupted when a glowing pink needler shard _whizzed_ into his shoulder plate and _pinged_ off the titanium armor. Scavenger took up firing positions and sized up their enemy. It was a fair-sized force; several dozen Grunts accompanied by around half a dozen Jackals and headed by ten or so Elites- David didn't really care about the exact numbers. Every single one of them would be dead in under sixty seconds anyway.

"Do it," Sierra hissed, and an earsplitting _crack_ filled the room as Jacob pulled the trigger on _Shadow of Night_. For an instant, nothing moved. Then, one of the blue-armored Elites fell limply to the ground, a hole in its neck spouting blue blood.

All hell broke loose.

The Grunts broke ranks and charged the five Spartans, yowling and screaming, firing randomly as they came. Several actually primed grenades and charged Scavenger with the explosives in hand. Quite a few, however, broke and tried to run, only to be set upon by a number of the Jackals and Elites, who shoved, bullied and kicked the recalcitrant Grunts back into the fight, if a fight it could be called. The Jackals who weren't restraining Grunts closed ranks and fired their energy pistols on overload charge towards the Spartans, sending flashes of static across David's heads-up display. The Elites were easily the best tacticians of the enemy, taking up positions along the corridor's sides and opening fire while the Grunts attacked from close range.

Correction- while the Grunts died at close range.

David met the first Grunt head on, taking its skull clean off its neck with a point-blank shot from his M90 before hurling the headless body at its two startled companions, bowling them over. Two more shells vacated the shotgun, downing twice that number of Grunts in under a second. In a similar amount of time, the same weapon's reinforced stock did much more damage, battering through chests, caving in skulls and cracking through the paltry armor of the squat Covenant cannon fodder. Everything became a blur for David; there was nothing in the whole world except him and his next victim, be it a Grunt, Jackal or Elite. If a shell from his shotgun wasn't what killed it, then it was the butt, and if whatever-it-was survived blunt force trauma to the face, it certainly went down after colored lines started appearing across its throat, courtesy of a six-inch titanium-steel blade. David wasn't sure how many he killed, and he didn't care. Celia needed a minute; Scavenger would give her an hour if she needed it.

Suddenly, a colossal _bang_ echoed from behind him, accompanied by a flash of fire and a rush of smoke. Heavy footsteps falling shortly afterwards told him that he was also needed behind the now-open door. Without a second thought, David turned on his heel and sprinted onto the Covenant destroyer's bridge.

The scene was utter chaos. Scavenger ran amok on the bridge, gunning and beating down most of the Elite and Grunt bridge crew before they even left their posts. The vast majority of the dead slumped in or near their seats. An Elite shipmaster in customary gold armor lay splayed across the deck, its spine broken clean in half.

David didn't hesitate. Taking two steps, he vaulted over the rail that separated the upper deck of the bridge from the lower half and joined the carnage below with a massive _crash_ as his four-hundred kilogram total bulk hit the metal floor feet-first. The deck crew wasn't even putting up a fight- those that weren't dead seemed preoccupied with escape rather than resistance. David smiled, savoring the cruel irony.

He fired until his shotgun's chamber was empty, not bothering to reload as he switched to his MA5B assault rifle, gunning down what was left of the bridge crew, mostly Grunts at this point. Even as he fired, a lump of bile formed in his throat as he contemplated what his team was doing, and it galled him. This wasn't what Spartans were meant for- they were soldiers, and combat was their forte. This wasn't combat- this was slaughter. It was just _too _easy.

He ceased fire and flicked on TEAMCOM, yelling to the rest of his team. "This is taking too long!" He then killed the channel and flicked on two settings in his heads-up display: an ONI-issue optical character recognition program and his suit's standard-issue Covenant-English translation software. He hurried over to the command console and booted up the two software packages, running them in parallel. The effect was instantaneous. Multiple windows popped into his field of view as the individual icons were translated, which grew only more numerous as the ONI software generated multiple possible statements for the Covenant hieroglyphs, courtesy of the multitudinous references and situational adjuncts that were attached to the root words of the Covenant vocabulary, giving David a veritable headache to work through. He gritted his teeth, and tried to slow his breathing. Rushing through a translation wouldn't do him any favors.

Finally, after almost a minute of glaring at the panorama of holographic icons, his software translated an icon that read 'Sealed Air' in English. His relief, though, was short-lived. The translated list continued to expand until the translation software had run its course, identifying a full fifty-one alternate translations for the same set of symbols. David bit his lip- he was willing to take the chance. He put his hand to the holographic controls, which gently pulsed red. He clicked TEAMCOM on. "Guys? I'd anchor myself. _Right now_."

Twelve faint _clicks _sounded as Scavenger's magnetic boot seals held the Spartans to the floor of the command bridge. The sound was barely audible, though, against the howling gale that had, until recently, been non-existent. It stood to truly testify the unthinking fashion in which the Covenant imitated Forerunner technology. _Why_ the ancient race had ever included airlock overrides in software was anybody's guess, but it could be counted on for the Covenant to copy anything the Forerunners did.

The thought was little comfort to David, who crouched low and attempted to resist the ever-accelerating air flow as it swirled and rushed around him, trying for all it was worth to sweep the six Spartans into the void. And that wasn't the only problem. The suit's thermal sensors indicated sharp drops in temperature all around the team as the innards of the destroyer were exposed to the vacuum, and even the environmental controls inside the MJOLNIR armor could only slow the process underneath the multiple layers of metal, crystal and circuitry. They couldn't keep this up for long.

Just as the temperature readings inside his MJOLNIR began to move outside the optimal range, another reading popped onto his heads-up display. There was zero external pressure. He pinged the rest of the team over TEAMCOM, and then touched the airlock control once again, sealing the doors in the corridors some way down, since the bridge's doors were now no more. A slight _hiss_ing noise filled the background as the command deck repressurized, and the temperature figures started to slowly rise.

Sierra took charge immediately. "All right, team- take up consoles and commandeer the ship. Use your OCR readouts and Covenant translation software to identify the stations. Two- you take the weapons station; Three and Four, communications and engineering. Five, you have the helm. Six- fire up the Slipspace generator-" she paused, apparently lost in thought, "-and get ready for a jump."

"WHAT?" Hayden roared back, before injecting a measure of control into his voice- a rare event. "We are not running from this fight."

"I didn't say we were running," Sierra snapped back, "do it."

Hayden stared back at Sierra for several more seconds, but then turned around and began to search the control panel for the controls to the destroyer's Slipspace drive. By that time, David already stood ready at the weapons controls and was looking through the different holographic panels. There seemed to be a large number of unnecessary controls at the weapons station. From what his translation software could read, there were multiple magnetic field controls, including an equivalent of what was known in UNSC slang as a 'pincher'; a field that selectively accelerated particles of a certain rotational direction and velocity. These he saw were linked to the reservoirs for the plasma torpedoes. "So much waste…" he murmured. The plasma reservoirs would release a volume of plasma, only a fraction of which would be spun and accelerated into a superheated ball. It saved some power, but was inefficient in terms of plasma usage. If UNSC ships had plasma weapons, not a molecule would have been wasted. But that's why humanity was retreating from the Outer Colonies, wasn't it? The Fleet _didn't_ have such weapons, relying instead on the sheer kinetic energy of MAC slugs and clouds of Archer missiles to destroy their enemies. The strategy worked well against Insurrectionists, but against shielded Covenant warships…

David cleared his head and moved his hands over the controls, cycling the plasma before it would have to be used- just in case.

"Weapons are ready for use," he reported back.

"Got the NAV system figured out," Celia said with a quick thumbs-up.

"Reactor's at ninety-six percent; one of the coils got shook up, but she'll do," Logan piped up.

"Slipspace engine reeled up, which is funny considering how apparently we're_ not _running."

"Cut the chatter, Six. Three, what's the status on coms?"

Jacob was still working feverishly at the communications controls. "They're pinging us, Sierra. Want to know why the Ship Master hasn't reported in; there's a Prophet on board one of the other destroyers and he's getting cranky."

Sierra did not reply for several seconds. When she did, it was apparent from her tone that the immediate situation was not foremost on her mind. "A Prophet… why, though…?" After apparently coming to a decision, she turned to Hayden, although she did not share her revelation. "Six, chart a Slipspace transition for these coordinates."

"_What_ coordinates?" Hayden demanded.

"_These_ coordinates," Sierra replied, still cool as ice, "I want you to jump this ship, but we won't be leaving the system. Like I said, we're not running."

Hayden paused just long enough for David to envision the smile on his face. His reply made David wonder what was honestly going to happen. "Who are you and what have you done with Scavenger One?"

"Can it, Hayden, and chart the jump."

"Aye, sir."

David did one final check on the status of the plasma reserves of the Covenant destroyer, but he noted the uncharacteristic remark on Hayden's part- and on Sierra's.

Sierra continued. "All right. Three- kill the coms; Covenant chatter won't do us any good. Four, divert power to weapons stations and Slipspace generators- goodness knows we'll need it. Two- get a firing solution on those destroyers."

The process did not take long, considering that the three ships were in stationary orbit. "Done," David reported.

"Good. Now reverse the vectors of the firing solutions."

"What?" was all David managed to say.

"Don't ask- just _do _it," Sierra barked.

David reversed the vectors into the firing computer- a maddening experience given his inexperience with Covenant ship controls. It would have been hard enough on a UNSC ship, with readouts and controls he could understand, and he would always prefer his boots on the ground with a rifle in his hand, but there was something inherently frustrating about this… he wasn't sure, but it wasn't any one factor that irked him so- their education on Harvest had consisted of more than just military training and tactics. Déjà had also gone into topics less directly related to combat, but still essential. One was an old concept- that any one thing was worth more than the sum of its parts. Maybe that was it.

Bringing his mind back into the here and now, he directed his hands over the holographic controls, and blue icons translated into numbers on his HUD.

"Firing solution calculated," he called.

Sierra nodded. "Good job, Two. All right- jump the ship on my mark… mark."

David managed to blurt out, "But where-" before a massive blue-white flash enveloped the destroyer and catapulted the ship, with Scavenger on board, into Slipstream space. Just as suddenly as it had begun, space flashed again, and they were the exact same distance they had been from the other two Covenant warships- only they were now on the opposite side.

"Two-fire all plasma lines at the closest enemy destroyer."

David paused a moment, slightly dumbstruck, before acknowledging. "Aye," he replied.

David's hands flew back and forth, manipulating the fields and adjusting the tracking spheres for each of the eight plasma torpedoes just launched at the now-doomed enemy ship. The eight balls of white flame collided with the blindsided destroyer, causing its shields to flare for an instant- but only for an instant- before collapsing. The plasma- super-pressurized ionized gas at five-thousand degrees Kelvin- consumed the ship, eating through armored hulls, collapsing decks and igniting atmosphere as it tore through the ship. When it reached the ship's fusion reactor, heat met heat in a massive golden-white blast that had David's visor not automatically polarized to compensate, would have blinded him. When the light had dissipated, nothing remained- not hull fragments, not inner compartments, and definitely not crew.

Sierra barked to the rest of them. "Status!" she demanded.

"Engines report plasma drain- it's going to take a while to recycle the plasma to fire again," Logan replied.

"Divert all plasma as it comes to powering the energy projector and raising our forward shields," Sierra ordered. "Five, maneuver us at flank speed at heading zero-six-two by three-four-three."

Celia answered, "Answering flank speed," but Logan butted in. "With the plasma drain, we're not going to be able to reinforce the shields, maneuver and fire at the same time, not so soon after firing. Recommend we forgo the projector and wait until plasma torpedoes are ready again, sir."

"Noted. Five, what's the status on movement?"

"Single remaining Covenant destroyer dead ahead, sir!"

On the control deck's central viewing screen, the bulbous, almost organic shape of a Covenant destroyer loomed large. Unlike its destroyed sister ship, there was no damage on this one, and a single area on its nose glowed bright blue.

Jacob, who had rushed over to the sensors panel, yelled "They're firing their energy projector!"

"Reinforce forward shields _now!_" Sierra roared. The blue orb on the Covenant ship's nose grew into a cohesive rippling globe of crackling energy- during ship-to-ship tactics training on Harvest, Logan had once described the energy projector as 'a MAC round and a lightning bolt hooking up'. David found the analogy strangely fitting.

"Shields?" Sierra asked, and through the urgency David detected the barest hint of nervousness.

"There's not enough power to reinforce it fully!" Logan warned. "I've done all I can!"

Sierra turned to Celia. "Five- ahead full at zero-zero-zero- by zero-zero-zero!"

"Answering ahead full, sir! This is gonna be rough!"

Their captured ship accelerated towards the enemy destroyer, closing the distance between the two in under half a second, as the blue globe of energy on the Covenant vessel blossomed into a searing white flame. Still _Righteous Intent _plowed on. As they neared the opposing ship, the white energy leapt forward, washing over their shields like water over rocks. Several successive _thumps_ soon followed.

"We've lost most of the sensors, but the viewing cameras are still online," Jacob reported.

"Forward shield has collapsed- nose integrity at fifty-one percent!" Logan called.

"Still accelerating…" Celia said, half-warningly, half-matter-of-factly.

David looked over to his own console, and saw that the energy projector had been completely blasted to pieces. He slammed a fist down onto the console, growling, "Energy projector is offline," through gritted teeth.

Warning sirens began to blare across the ship, useless noise to a skeleton crew already aware of the situation. "One thousand kilometers!" Jacob warned. "Five hundred… two hundred … collision imminent!"

"Brace yourselves!" Sierra shouted.


	6. Chapter 5: Quick and Not So Quiet

Author's note: May come back to revise this chapter at some point. In the meantime- enjoy.

**

* * *

CHAPTER 05**

**0818 HOURS, 17 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**HIGH ORBIT OVER ASTEROID M6-17, 205 ZETA INDI SYSTEM**

**COMMAND DECK OF CAPTURED COVENANT DESTROYER **_**RIGHTEOUS INTENT**_

The crash jolted the command deck, sending anything on the bridge that wasn't secured toppling over. David and the rest of Scavenger, though, quickly balanced themselves, compensating for the sudden shifts in position, and were thus none the less comfortable as the front half of their captured ship was shaken to bits.

"Report!" Sierra demanded.

"Plasma drained to nothing- we're dead in the air, Sierra!" Logan replied, an edge to his voice.

"Confirm that!"

David checked the weapons station- all the hieroglyphs showing on his heads-up display translated to read the exact same thing: 'Plasma depleted'.

"Confirmed- all weapons are dead!" he yelled.

Sierra nodded. "How's our neighbor, Three?" she requested of Jacob, who was frantically shifting between the various sensor arrays on the destroyer, most of which, David noted, were either flooded with static or simply absent altogether. The holographic display panels present at each control station were a scant fraction of what they had been only a few moments previous. _Righteous Intent _was in a very sorry state indeed.

"They seem to be doing a bit better than us…" Jacob said warningly, bringing up all external cameras that showed the enemy destroyer. The ship seemed to be doing much better on the outside than Scavenger knew _Righteous Intent_ to be doing on the inside. The only serious damage seemed to be to the vessel's nose, which nonetheless bled plasma and atmosphere through the now-gaping maw that composed her front. The rest of the enemy ship was intact, although judging by the damage to the bow; it was far from looking as formidable as it had done before the collision.

"A bit better?" asked Sierra. "Four, how _are_ we doing?"

David got the feeling he wasn't the only one who heard Logan's low rumbling voice. "Frontal armor is completely gone… we-" he paused to pore over the readouts for a moment longer- "we are now sitting in the new nose of our captured ship. Blowout extends to two of our auxiliary reactors, and the energy projector's completely gone. Two of the plasma launchers could be used, but we're completely dead on fodder." A slightly stunned silence greeted the end of his pronouncement.

Celia corroborated his report. "Powerhouse for propulsion is fried- we can't even steer this bucket for another ramming attempt."

Sierra remained completely still- the only indication that she had heard any of what her team had told her was a slight tightening of the fists her hands had balled themselves into. After a two-second interval that seemed to stretch on and on, she turned to Logan. Her words could not have sounded sweeter to David.

"Four- set the reactors to overload and blow the ship. Saddle up, Scavenger- we're going groundside."

Logan nodded, and pushed on a holographic control that caused all remaining lights on the deck to glow red. "We've got two minutes. Permission to get the hell out of here?"

Sierra gave him a thumbs-up. "Can do, Spartan. Granted."

"Finally…" Hayden muttered.

And with that, Scavenger left the room at a full sprint, vaulting over railings, seats and debris with less effort than conscious thought. The next few minutes were a strange experience for David- the entire trip from the command deck to the amidships decks elapsed in what was commonly dubbed 'Spartan time'- the six Spartans tore through passages and corridors like a flaming sickle through barley, causing the interior of the ship to appear blurred, but if David spotted something that drew his attention, even for an instant, time seemed to crawl even as it raced by, allowing him to scrutinize the inner intricacies of the ship in the tiniest instances before the two-point-four ton storm that was Team Scavenger swept through the area and out of sight. When they arrived at a junction half a dozen decks down, Logan and Hayden raced ahead, while Celia, Sierra and Jacob broke right. David stopped where he was.

"We're jumping ship!" Sierra called, and she, Celia and Jacob continued to race along the right-hand corridor.

"WHAT?" Logan asked incredulously.

Hayden shook his head. "She meant literally _jumping_ ship, Lo. Get down to earth sometimes, will ya?" As he, David and Logan sprinted after the others, David was sure he heard Logan growling under his breath.

They arrived at the hangar bay soon thereafter, and by David's mission clock, there were forty-nine seconds left before the ship and everything on it was flash-incinerated. The other three members of Scavenger stood braced at the entrance to the hangar bay. Due to the lack of atmosphere, there was no pressure differential, and thus Scavenger was not at risk of being propelled into space.

They would just jump instead.

M6-17 loomed large in David's view. The two damaged Covenant ships may have been in high orbit over the asteroid, but due to their size, and thus their gravitational pull, 'high' orbit meant something very different around an asteroid than being in high orbit over a planet, say Harvest or Reach. David activated the field-magnification system on his MJOLNIR heads-up display, and could make out the individual shapes of the Covenant mining and refinery complexes.

He turned to Sierra. "So we're supposed to jump?"

"Affirmative, Two." Sierra still stared at the surface of the asteroid below them.

Hayden stepped between them, all business for once. "And we're not taking escape pods down there?"

"The pods require a manual jettison from the crew bay, Six. If we use those, one of us stays behind." She completed the lecture with a slap to the side of Hayden's helmet, which prompted Celia, Logan, Jacob and David all to step back. "Are you volunteering, Six?"

Hayden's acknowledgement light blinked crimson.

There was a shudder, and their view of M6-17 began to shift. "Damn," Logan muttered. "They must have snagged us somewhere. Boss, if we're going to jump, we should do it now!"

David glanced at his mission timer. Twenty-eight seconds. They would need every second of that to clear the blast radius of the reactor overload.

Sierra seemed to be bracing herself, but as what was left of _Righteous Intent _gave another shuddering lurch, she blinked her acknowledgement light green once- and leapt from the hangar, racing towards the surface of M6-17.

Scavenger followed suit, jumping, spread-eagled, from the doomed ship. David flipped over so his back was facing M6-17, and watched the two entangled Covenant destroyers sluggishly move from their position above the asteroid's surface. When his mission timer read five seconds, he noticed a movement to his side, and glanced over.

All of his team were on their backs, their faces pointed heavenward at the destruction they knew was coming. Of particular note were Logan's fingers, which were all outstretched, but retracted as the seconds ticked off his counter.

_Four…three…two…one…_

David wasn't quite sure what happened next, but as soon as he wrenched his eyes open and blinked the purple spots from his field of view, both destroyers were simply- gone. Only a few scattered flecks of purple alloy marked where the two ships had once been. He opened up the TEAMCOM channel and spoke into it, unable to stand the silence.

"Hey Logan- nice fireworks."

Scavenger Four's satisfaction was audible in his reply, although the words themselves seemed neutral. "Thank my suppliers, David. The goods are all theirs- I just lit the fuse."

David smiled and flipped over, scanning the view below them. Immediately, something clicked in his brain. Scavenger was close to the surface, but had not encountered any turbulence, which meant one thing: no atmosphere. That meant two other things- they were breathing cycled air form their suits, but more importantly, no air resistance.

In other words, there was no such thing as terminal velocity for them. Scavenger would continually accelerate until they hit the surface. Checking his external pressure sensors only confirmed it- Scavenger was falling through a vacuum. And they were falling much faster than they should have been.

He clicked on TEAMCOM and pinged the rest of his team. "Sierra! We're going in too fast!"

"I know that, Two- they must have installed large-scale grav projectors on the surface. But we can't take countermeasures now- we have to wait until we're further down!" David nodded his assent at Sierra's reasoning.

"Spartans- overpressurize your suits' gel layers on my mark," she ordered calmly.

David had to speak. "If we pass out on the way down-"

"It's either nitrogen embolisms or impact injuries- take your pick, Two."

David gritted his teeth and pulled up the manual controls for his suit's gel layer with a whisper. Much as he hated to admit it, it was their best chance. If they had been falling onto any other asteroid, they would have touched down as gracefully as if they'd been using parachutes. But here, with the artificial gravity projectors, they might as well be jumping from high altitude on Reach. Increasing the pressure in the gel layer of their suits would cushion the impact and- hopefully- save their lives. David slowed his breathing and flexed his extremities gently- jumping the gun wasn't going to do him any favors. Scavenger was now close enough to the ground that David could make out the tiny blue streams of Covenant gravity beams, ferrying minerals between the various buildings that composed the mine site.

As cool as ice, Sierra gave the order. "Mark."

David overrode the automatic pressure control in his MJOLNIR and overpressurized the gel. He felt no change, though, and continued to watch in silence with the rest of his squad as the ground loomed nearer and nearer, taking his suit's word for it that the gel's pressure was maxed out. As they descended the final ten meters, the urge to close his eyes was nearly overwhelming, but forced his lids back. A good soldier was always aware of the situation- even if it hurt.

The air was dashed from his lungs and searing pains shot through his chest, forearms and thighs, which resulted in a pained grunt, despite his best efforts to contain and localize the throbbing sensation that now occupied a full quarter of his sensory surfaces, and was spreading. He pulled up his suit's TEAMBIO function- aside from elevated heart rate, he was fine. The same was true of the rest of his team. David sprang to his feet, sweeping out his MA5B and scanning the barren landscape.

Hayden was the first to speak. "That is the _last_ time I take your advice on an insertion…"

"That was an order, not advice," Sierra replied bluntly.

Hayden, who was inspecting his MA5B, did not reply.

Jacob was peering through the Oracle scope on _Shadow of Night_, and gave a report as he scanned the area.

"We got lucky… landed less than half a klick away from the mining facility- I could actually pick off the guards at this distance…"

"Negative, Three- save your ammo. We don't want to attract attention until absolutely necessary."

"Sure thing, boss."

"Five, is the package secure?"

"Roger," Celia replied, flashing a quick thumbs-up.

Sierra seemed content. "Okay, Spartans. We're-" she started, but was interrupted as six jet-black dots raced across the airless sky, growing larger as they approached ground level, until they finally landed on the surface, displacing clouds of rock and dust with their impacts.

David's com crackled to life. "Scavenger, this is Reaper-Actual, what's your status?"

Sierra replied first. "This is Scavenger-Actual- Covenant orbital assets have been permanently neutralized, and all Scavenger are accounted for on the surface. Acknowledge, Reaper-Actual."

There was a pause. "Acknowledged, Scavenger. Good hunting. Out."

Sierra then turned to the rest of the team. "All right, let's sprint this one out. Half a klick, full speed the whole way." Five heads nodded in reply, although Hayden accompanied his nod with a muttered comment that Sierra either did not hear or ignored. David had a strong suspicion that the latter was more likely.

David moved across the broken rocky landscape as quickly as his legs would carry him, a not-inconsiderable forty kilometers per hour. The rest of the team matched his speed, and the six Spartans moved in close-knit formation, raising plumes of rock dust as they raced across the intervening space between them and the mining facility. If anyone had looked toward them at that moment, all that would have been visible was a small moving brownish-grey cloud.

Unfortunately, someone was looking. A trio of Grunts operating an obscure piece of equipment on the roof of a large domelike structure glanced out across the landscape, and, in typical fashion, immediately began chattering and barking among themselves. Almost as soon as the squat Covenant workers turned around to converse amongst themselves, Sierra whispered over TEAMCOM, "There were no witnesses." A split second later, three _cracks_ split the air, and the Grunts collapsed, lifeless, one actually exploding as a round penetrated its breathing apparatus and ignited its volatile contents, spewing flames over the bodies of the three squat Covenant workers. Scavenger took no notice- instead, David and the others progressed into the underground mine proper seconds thereafter.

After passing through seven sets of proximity-triggered airlocks, Scavenger passed into a massive cavernous space- even with his visor's magnification set to maximum, David's eyes strained to make out the minuscule Grunt workers working at the other end of the complex and they operated laser drills and gravity beams, moving various masses of an ambiguous dark brown material onto a series of gravity lifts that ferried it to parts unknown.

Sierra glanced down at her ONI-issued datapad while Scavenger took up firing positions around her, although David honestly began to wonder what threat Grunt mining workers would pose- for the past two decades, the UNSC had been unable to make any significant advances into Covenant space- the enemy would be complacent behind their lines. Translation: minimal security, at least compared to a UNSC facility.

Sierra then spoke on an open UNSC channel, contacting Edward and Team Reaper. David and the others kept a watch for any overly-alert Grunt workers, but David wondered about Reaper. Inserted as they were in stealth HEVs, pinpoint delivery was virtually guaranteed. The Covenant communications should have been down by now. What was going on?

"Reaper, this is Scavenger-Actual. Sitrep on Covenant communications, over."

Static.

"Repeat, Reaper- this is Scavenger Actual. Sitrep on Covenant communications, over!"

Still static. Then, over TEAMCOM, David heard the sounds of distant gunfire. The distinct _cracks_ of UNSC assault rifles mingled with the discharges of Covenant plasma weapons. Then Laura-343's voice came, loud and clear, across the channel.

"This is Reaper-Three. We have encountered resistance en route to the communications station- there are Jackal security forces in the refinery complex. Reaper-Actual is-"

A dull _boom_ sounded over TEAMCOM. "Sitrep!" Sierra demanded.

"Scavenger, this is Reaper-Actual. Communications relay down- proceed with planting of nuclear ordnance." The voice wasn't Laura's.

Sierra nodded. "Copy, Reaper Actual. Scavenger out."

Scavenger did not need to be told twice. A soon as Sierra looked up from her datapad, David and the others were already preparing lines to rappel into the deepest shafts in the mining complex, while Jacob scanned the area for any of the Jackals that Laura had mentioned in her brief transmission. David knew that he and the others could breathe easy for the moment; in a long-distance fight, nothing- literally nothing- got the jump on Jacob. He was a rare instance of Scavenger actually having a leg-up on Reaper. Reaper's sniper, Laura, was good, but she was always just a twitch slower than Jacob.

Lines secured, David gave the thumbs-up signal to Sierra, who barked orders. "Two, Four, Six- head down and secure the area for Five. Three, cover us."

David secured himself to a line, and at a nod from Logan and Hayden, slid swiftly down the line past meter after meter of scarred and pocked stone to land with soft _thuds_ at the bottom of the roughly-conical shaped shaft. David's shotgun ascended to eye level, and so did Logan's twin M7 submachine guns and Hayden's MA5B.

David looked back up the way they had come- the mineral the Covenant had been mining had been deposited in bands, and the extraction had created the illusion of terraces cut into the rock as the Covenant descended deeper into the asteroid while searching for resources. This level at the bottom was the very deepest and the smallest in terms of area. It reminded David faintly of-

"Hell…" he murmured.

Logan turned to look at him. "What?"

"Dante Alighieri's _Divine Comedy_, Lo. In _Inferno_, Hell was roughly cone-shaped… nine terraces of decreasing size until you got down to the very bottom."

Sierra cut in. "Treachery was frozen, Two- so as far as I'm concerned, we left Hell behind us on Harvest. Enough about the classical literature. Sitrep?" David sighed- as usual, Sierra had a point. Why _now_, of all times, did he have to start pondering medieval poetry? He blinked his acknowledgement light green.

"Bottom of the shaft is clear. Ready to proceed."

A few short seconds later, Celia landed next to them. She removed a conical object, not much longer than an assault rifle, from her pack, and with it a datapad. After tapping the surface of the datapad several times, she shifted the conical warhead to better position it, and then pushed a final button, upon which David's mission clock flashed on his heads-up display- 15:00.

Hayden snorted. "You should have given it five," he sighed. All the same, though, he prepared to ascend the line.

When they arrived back at the top of the shaft, Sierra looked them up and down. "Status?" she asked.

"Ordnance planted," Celia reported, making a circle with her index finger and thumb while raising the three remaining fingers high.

"All right," Sierra said, "make for the evac point-" But before she could finish, Jacob fired his sniper rifle with a resounding _crack_, and a Jackal, depleted shield unit and all, fell to the floor with a _plop_. With a rapid-fire sequence of shots, Jacob downed three more enemies before diving behind an overturned grav lift. Scavenger did not waste the time Jacob gave them- From behind the lip of the shaft they had only recently ascended, Hayden and Celia sent bursts of suppressive fire into the ranks of the Jackals that had begun to emerge on the upper levels, while Sierra provided cover for Jacob.

"It took them this long?" Jacob murmured, every word dripping with disdain. "Sloppy."

David and Logan, side by side, rushed across the bottom floor, trying to find an elevator or passage- some method of portage that would get them to the upper levels. While neither was incompetent at ranged combat, close-quarters was what the two of them had been specifically trained for, and David did not intend to engage Covenant long-range skirmishers on their terms.

The two of them crouched behind another gravity lift as bolts of sickly green plasma flew past them, searing the rock below their feet into a slick glassine surface. At a nod from Logan, David shouldered his M90 and, with a heave, pointed the gravity projector slightly above the Jackals, being careful to reverse the controls on the unit first. He then thumbed the holographic control, and a coruscating blue shroud leapt from the lift's front. Logan leapt directly into it, the reversed gravity flow catapulting his four-hundred kilogram form in an arc onto one of the ledges- and landing him directly on top of a Jackal, with crushing results.

David, satisfied, followed suit, vaulting over the lift's top to soar into the air, carried by the luminescent flow of reversed gravity. His innards scrambled themselves as even the reduced gravity of M6-17 was replaced by a force that didn't feel so much like a _pull_, but more of a push. He landed with a_ crash_, and even as the Jackal next to him uttered a squawk of protest, David caught it with a swift right hook that spun its head to an angle unnatural for any vertebrate, and the avian alien collapsed without another sound. David snatched away its still-intact energy gauntlet and dashed along the ledge.

The first two Jackals he met both raised their shields towards him- and were instantly cut down by the fire his team laid down. The third one, seeing this, rolled to David's side, positioning itself so that David stood between it and the rest of Scavenger. It then fired its plasma pistol on overload charge at point blank range directly at David, who raised his captured Jackal arm shield to block.

Green met blue in an explosion of arcing energy and sparks; the shield overloaded and sputtered, its usefulness outlived. Heat and radiation washed over the MJOLNIR's surface- inside, David watched the radiation counter on his heads-up display fluctuate wildly. He swung his M90 up and fired it, point blank, into the Jackal's face, effectively decapitating it. The scrawny, now-headless form of the Jackal fell to the floor of the ledge, a lurid blue liquid pooling at the neck.

The next two Jackals were similarly easy to take down. Preoccupied as they were with trying not to get shot, their shields were facing towards the four members of Team Scavenger below them, and thus no protection against David, who didn't even bother wasting ammunition- within seconds, both Jackals collapsed with several fractured spinal bones each.

Seeing that all of the Jackals had now been dealt with, David slowed his breathing and glanced at the countdown on his mission timer.

13:38. _Celia really should have given it just 5 minutes,_ he thought.

**DATE/TIME UNKNOWN, ESTIMATED TIMESTAMP: 0836 HOURS, 17 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**SLIPSPACE, SOMEWHERE IN THE 205 ZETA INDI SYSTEM**

Lieutenant Graves examined the bank of displays in front of him- TEAMBIO readouts, TEAMCAM, transcripts of TEAMCOM chatter, and several views from _Fleet of Foot_'s ventral cameras. Alongside them, he had computerized records of a trio of other events, with the exact same data fields. His eyes darted back and forth between the four sets of displays, briefly checking the time stamps of each one before moving on. The one he was looking at now was dated 17/01/2546. The other three: 27/11/2525, 27/7/2537 and 03/07/2545.

205 Zeta Indi. Chi Ceti IV. Asteroid K7-49. Pegasi Delta. Three secret, one heavily publicized. But the PR details didn't matter to Graves. His eyes continued to dart back and forth, noting heart rates, COM usage patterns, and mission timers, not missing anything if he could help it. Every so often, he would pause one of the three displays from Chi Ceti or one of the SPARTAN-III operations, but even if sorely pressed, he would not pause the live feed from Teams Scavenger and Reaper on the ground. His eyes were on their viewscreen most of the time, taking in every detail, and logging the relevant information wirelessly into his datapad.

Just then, a bright blue-purple flash tore through the inky black of Slipspace. At first glance, it looked like a spontaneous tear between the quasi-dimensions, but slight glints and flashes showed the position of the Spartans' subprowler as the few reflective surfaces on the hull caught the light from _Fleet of Foot_'s viewing cameras. A second later, SHIPCOM crackled to life. "_Fleet of Foot, _this is Reaper-Actual, do you copy?"

Graves' left index finger gently pressed down on the 'Speak' button on his console. "This is Graves. Welcome back, teams. Dock and proceed immediately to the briefing room; we'll be underway in five minutes. What's the casualty report?"

"One WIA, none KIA, sir."

"That's good to hear. You have your orders."

"Understood, sir. Out."

Graves permitted himself a small sigh. Nobody had been Killed In Action. _That, quite frankly_, he though to himself, was quite possibly the best thing about this mission. For over fifteen years, he'd supervised hundreds of operations, and not a single one had taken place without an operative being killed or otherwise permanently incapacitated. To be fair, this was his first mission with Spartans, but all the same…

Graves wiped the sweat from his brow, and began to compose his post-mission report, pushing to the deepest corner of his mind the thought that his first KIA-free mission would likely be his last.


	7. Chapter 6: Deployment in Force

Author's note: Time for a subplot. Enjoy!

**

* * *

CHAPTER 06**

**0832 HOURS, 17 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**UNSCDF ARCHIVES, PLANET REACH, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM**

_ACCESS GRANTED/ FILE LOADED/_

_PUBLIC FILE 283-A7_

_/OPEN FILE 1 OF 1/_

_FILE DATED: 13/01/2546_

_FILETYPE: TRANSCRIPT_

_LOCATION: 232B-ALPHA PEGASI, UNSC COLONY MIDAS V_

_SUBJECTS:_

_LIEUTENANT, JUNIOR GRADE ASA MYUGO, _DALTON _R.S.O._

_WARRANT OFFICER MURRAH BANKS, MIDAS V_ _SENSOR STATION_ GAMMA

_ENSIGN WILLIAM NOME, MIDAS V SENSOR STATION _DELTA

_DALTON R.S.O.: Epsilon Station, this is Dalton RSO, we're reading multiple sensor pings in your sector, please confirm, over. (pause) I say again, Epsilon Station, this is Dalton RSO, we're reading multiple sensor pings in your sector, please confirm, over. Epsilon Station, come in. (pause) Epsilon Station, please respond… is anyone there?_

_GAMMA STATION: Dalton RSO, come in, over._

_DALTON R.S.O.: This is Dalton._

_GAMMA STATION: Reading seven- strike that- nine- wait… twelve contacts, all massing near Huris… getting confirmation on sensor profiles now._

_DALTON R.S.O.: Get Epsilon on the line for a better picture- I can't raise them._

_GAMMA STATION: No joy- I think they're gone... Profiles complete- pings match Covenant warships. One carrier, one cruiser. The rest are all frigates. Range at one million kilometers and closing._

_DALTON R.S.O.: Contact CENTCOM- tell them to prepare for imminent Covenant attack. _

_DELTA STATION: Dalton, come in! Dalton, we're reading multiple in-system ruptures! Fields resolving… Reading eighteen new arrivals._

_DALTON R.S.O.: Thirty ships… oh God…_

_DELTA STATION: Sir?_

_GAMMA STATION: Sir?_

_DALTON R.S.O.: Get CENTCOM on the line- get FLEETCOM- tell everyone! Prepare NAV databases for deletion and set reactors to self-destruct. Confirm._

_Pause_

_DALTON R.S.O.: All points- confirm last message._

_DELTA STATION: Copy that, Dalton. CENTCOM reports all units mobilizing, and crew are evacuating now._

_DALTON R.S.O.: Good. Confirm progress, Gamma Station… (pause) Gamma Station, come in. Oh no…_

_DELTA STATION: I can see it from here- the Covenant got to them, Dalton. Evacuating now. See you all groundside._

_DALTON R.S.O.: Alpha Station, Beta Station, this is Dalton R.S.O. Stations Gamma through Epsilon have detected an incoming Covenant force totaling thirty ships. Winter Contingency has been declared- CENTCOM has been alerted and Navy forces are en route to engage. Your orders are to wipe all NAV databases and detonate reactors ASAP. Evacuate all personnel. Enter authorization code: SCORCHEDEARTH. Good luck, gentlemen._

_

* * *

_

**0855 HOURS, 20 JANUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**MIDAS V, ALPHA PEGASI SYSTEM**

Avery-202 hurtled through the underbrush, a titanium bullet in the light foliage. Aside from the slight rustle of his movement, the world was silent, a far cry from the din of just a few minutes ago. From where he was, it could have just been another day on the human colony of Midas V.

But it wasn't. The Covenant had come.

A white flash overhead caused him to look up through the trees. Although his view was obscured, he could make out the expanding globe of brilliant white light directly above him. That wasn't right- 232-B Alpha Pegasi was a faint orange star, and right now it should only have risen halfway up from the horizon. What was more, this new star cooled after a few moments to a bright yellow, before separating into distinct clouds of orange and red, along with an expanding ring of shining metal shards.

Avery sighed and moved on. What happened in space above Midas V wasn't his business, simply because it wasn't his mission.

Fire teams Shadow and Castle had been deployed to the surface to help repulse a Covenant advance towards Midas V CENTCOM headquarters. They were to assist the Marines at Alpha Line, three clusters of fortified bases positioned directly between the Covenant landing zone and CENTCOM Alpha Complex. It had looked simple at first. Wait for the Covenant to come. Beat them back. Counterattack if possible.

That had all changed halfway into the drop. Alpha Line hadn't just been overrun- it had been obliterated. The surviving Marines had scattered into the Tanaz forest and were trying to make their way to CENTCOM and mount a defense there. The Spartans' new orders- cover the retreat. In practical terms that basically meant create as much havoc as possible, since twelve humans couldn't exactly be considered an effective screening force over a front that was more than a kilometer wide. All the same, there had been no objections. So, for the past half hour, the two teams had been moving to regroup, all the while hunting down any Covenant they ran into.

Avery froze. There was movement in the area. And it wasn't him.

Two Special Operations Elites, in their customary dark armor moved through the forest, although they stopped moving almost after Avery took pains to minimize his own movement. The two looked back and forth through their weapons sights, scanning every bit of the area, and resolutely refusing to move on. Avery's eyes widened. They were looking for _him_. Alone and with standard tactics, he didn't stand a chance against them. He was fresh out of training, whereas they were likely veterans of years of battles, probably against the UNSC.

Fighting wasn't an option- there was almost no way he could win. But then again, running wasn't either. They would simply shoot him down. So fighting it was.

He checked his weapons. He'd discarded his spent assault rifle in favor of a needler pistol he'd taken from a dead Grunt, but using that was out of the question. The bright pink needles would be a dead giveaway, and time spent taking one of the Elites down would be more than enough for the other one to take him out.

He'd also long since run out of ammunition for his M6 pistol, as well, so in its place he now kept an azure-colored Covenant plasma rifle. But the bright blue bolts the weapon fired were as visible as needler shards. Avery resisted the mounting urge to sigh in exasperation. He reached for his last fragmentation grenade- he'd been using captured plasma grenades almost the entire time he'd been moving through the forest, since they were in greater supply. But a bright blue ball of fire was not what he needed right now.

He primed the dark gray grenade with a soft _click_, and rolled it gently towards the Elites' feet. It wasn't quiet enough- both immediately looked down, and after a split-second's examination, leapt from where they stood. Avery sprang from his position too, hurtling towards one of the Elites, conscious on a very basic level that he was the first- and probably the last- person he knew to deliberately run towards a grenade blast.

He slammed into one of the Elites with his shoulder just as the grenade exploded. Between the concussive force, shards of white-hot metal, and four hundred kilograms of Spartan and MJOLNIR armor, its shields flared once before vanishing. The Elite's comrade had recovered from the explosion enough to begin firing, and static flashed across his visor as blue plasma bolts rushed past him. He grabbed the front of the first Elite's chestpiece and drew the soldier in front of him like a shield. With a glance at his motion tracker, he rushed the Special Ops Elite, keeping the body of its unconscious squadmate between them.

The Elite moved back and forth, constantly trying to get a firing angle on Avery that didn't involve melting through its fellow's body. Firing its plasma rifle in bursts, it jumped to and fro, forcing Avery to constantly move the now-dead Elite he was using as a shield. After another burst, the Elite threw its plasma aside with an enraged howl and whipped out an energy sword. With a deft sweep, it sliced through the trunk of a tree- and then kicked said tree towards Avery.

Instinct took over. Avery dropped the Elite's body and leapt aside, curling into a ball and rolling as he hit the ground. He sprang up just in time to see the second Elite barrel into him, knocking him into the ground. He gasped for breath as the Elite pinned him to the ground with its foot. Its split lips opened as it snarled, and its sword arm drew back. Avery gulped audibly as he eyed the glowing blue points of the sword. He squeezed his eyes almost shut, not entirely ready to see Death take him, but all the same, strangely curious.

He breathed evenly, waiting for the end to come.

It didn't.

The first _crack_ yanked his eyes open an instant before something caused the Elite's shields to flare silver. The warrior spun on the spot, distracted, and a second _crack_ ripped through the foliage, accompanied by a bullet, which exited the Elite's body in a spray of purple blood through the back of its neck armor. The Elite slumped, and fell over backwards. Avery scrambled to get out of the way, but only partially succeeded, and the limp form of the Elite lay on top of his legs.

With a grunt, Avery shoved the corpse off. He left his plasma rifle on the ground in favor of the one used by the Elite. A quick inspection confirmed that it was holding almost ninety percent charge- double the number of shots his had left. He activated the safeties on the energy sword, and sparks danced over the weapon's hilt as it disabled the magnetic field that kept the plasma blade under control. The energy sword was powerful, to be sure, but in this case, stealth was more desirable, and using it would be a bigger giveaway than attaching a flare to his armor.

He stood up. At that moment, he heard footsteps behind him, and his motion tracker caught a contact, with a yellow 'non-hostile' IFF signature. He turned to face a two-meter figure in MJOLNIR armor toting an SRS99D sniper rifle. He approached the Spartan, who promptly raised the weapon's sights to eye level.

"Icepick," he said simply.

Avery sighed. "Hector, you know it's me."

"Icepick," the Spartan, Hector, repeated.

"Do I _look_ like an Insurrectionist? I'm a _Spartan_, height and all."

The figure hesitated this time, waiting a full second before repeating his challenge.

"Fine…" Avery muttered. "Phoenix. Happy now, Shadow Two?"

Hector-176 relaxed. "Yeah," he replied after a moment, "it became harder after you pointed out that you were a Spartan- can't get around that."

"Enough chat- let's get moving. They sent this team after me- they're on the lookout for Spartans."

"Got it. Let's go- rally point is at Bravo Base- or where it used to be."

Avery consulted his TACMAP and saw the NAV marker over UNSC Bravo Base. As he and Hector marched through the underbrush, the sky darkened, and a particularly dense cloud passed overhead. Both of them glanced up.

The 'cloud' in question consisted of three bulbs- two smaller sections to the front and a larger one in the center. Small masses of black darted to and fro around it, and the speed it moved at was not natural for any weather formation, save maybe a tornado.

Hector started to crouch, but Avery stopped him. "It doesn't matter," he said simply. If the Covenant wanted to kill them, then they wouldn't need to pick up their sensor signals, if a cruiser could even pick up a contact that small. They could simply burn the whole forest with plasma, or, if they wanted to be thorough, simply glass the planet from high orbit.

Avery tapped Hector on the shoulder; they continued moving. Another white flash lit the sky above them less than a minute after that, but neither looked up. Avery's hunch was confirmed by the fact that the shade did not return after the flash.

"Which one was that?" he asked Hector through TEAMCOM.

"No idea," his teammate replied, "twenty-one teams were sent on orbital cleanup. That could have been any one of them. Keep moving."

A split second later, static washed over Avery's heads-up display, and every sensor went haywire. His motion-assisting circuitry surged and sparked deep inside his suit, and he jerked and struggled as his suit went from hyper-responsive to zero sensitivity at random. Hector turned to face him, his top turning the full one hundred eighty degrees while his left leg seized up halfway through the turn.

"You too?" he grunted.

"Damn EMP," Avery replied. "Must've been an external detonation…"

Hector growled. UNSC nuclear armaments created an electromagnetic pulse which could cause havoc in electronic systems. Firing the nukes inside of Covenant shields allowed the shields to contain the brunt of the pulse, but an external explosion, if it was powerful enough to destroy the ship, would send an unimpeded wave of energy that could scramble anything- even MJOLNIR armor, apparently.

Avery ran a diagnostic on his armor- the voltage spikes in his electronics caused by the EMP were gone now. He nodded at Hector, who nodded back. Just then, a figure- human, by its body shape- sprinted into view. Tiny green letters flashed at the bottom of Avery's HUD, decoding the individual's IFF friend/foe tag. Kimiko-390. Shadow Five.

"How is he?" she asked brusquely.

"Icepick!" Hector called back.

"You're not getting me with that twice!" she yelled. "Let's go, already!"

Without warning, a thin purple beam sliced through nearby trees, blasting smoking holes through the trunks. With a dull _hiss_, it slammed into Hector's chestplate. Hector, clutching at his chest, threw himself onto the forest floor. "Scatter!" he growled. Neither Avery nor Kimiko wasted a moment.

Avery consulted TACMAP as the trees rocketed past him. There was nothing. Avery bit his lip as he switched from TACMAP to his motion tracker- things in space weren't good if the Covenant had spare time enough to shoot down NAV satellites.

Five red blips lit up on his display, moving in a loose arrowhead formation towards Kimiko and himself. Avery pulled out the needler on his thigh armor panel and checked the energy coil. Pink and glowing. _Good_, he thought…

He noticed the yellow dot representing Kimiko move in closer to the 'point' of the Covenant wedge. At that same moment, a pinprick of red light appeared in the periphery of his vision. As he turned to observe, it grew from a spot into a coruscating globe. Shaking the red spot from his mind, he raised the needler and took aim at the emerging scrawny figure of a Jackal. He could deal with the red dot later, whatever it was.

Avery blinked as a crimson lance ripped through the forest. Trees toppled and split, and three contacts vanished instantaneously from Avery's motion tracker. Kimiko appeared from between the trees, holding a weapon Avery had never seen before. He wiped that from his mind- kill enemies first, ask questions later.

Sweeping past Kimiko, he fired his needler's entire load of quills directly into the first Jackal, which squawked and dropped its beam rifle in surprise. Not even slowing as a cloud of burning pink mist grew behind him, Avery rushed the second remaining Jackal, which crouched behind its handheld shield.

Not even bothering with weapons, Avery roared and simply plowed on, shoulder forward and head down, directly into the Jackal, carrying it along in his wake. After a further second, a wet _crunch_ announced his impact with a tree. Avery lowered his shoulder slightly and pushed forward again, stopping after a cacophony of _crack_ and _crunch_ sounds confirmed the Jackal's grisly fate. He stepped back, surveying his work for a brief moment, before finally gathering up all his feelings from the past few minutes and balling them into his foot, with which he then kicked what was left of the Jackal's corpse. With a sharp _crack,_ bark popped off the tree trunk behind the dead body, and wood fibers splintered off. Avery frowned- he hadn't meant to kick _that_ hard.

He moved back towards Kimiko, who by now had swapped out the large weapon he'd seen her use before for an M7 submachine-gun. The larger of the two was now strapped to her back. The weapon had a shaped brace, presumably for cushioning the weapon against the user's shoulder. The rest of the weapon, simply put, looked like a rectangular casing, with the exception of the cylindrical piece running through its center. It didn't seem to have any magazine or ammunition feed.

"What was that?" Avery asked.

"Some sort of laser," Kimiko answered, rising to face him. "When the Covenant attacked, CENTCOM ordered everyone into the defense- they went to ONI and _requisitioned-_" she put extra emphasis on that word in particular, and Avery nodded- the spooks could be somewhat hard-headed, "- some of the prototypes from their weapons labs. Hector and I raided what was left of Alpha Base before meeting up with you. That's also how we got fresh ammo."

Avery nodded. "And the others?"

Kimiko shook her head. "There's too much cross-talk on the E-band. We haven't heard from them."

Just then, Avery heard a rustle behind him. He and Kimiko whirled around on the spot, weapons leveled.

Hector walked slowly towards them, his right hand clamped over the center of his chestpiece where the beam rifle had hit him. Avery rushed to his teammate's side and pulled out a canister of Biofoam, only to discover that the hole in Hector's armor had already been filled.

"Very near miss," Hector commented, shaking his head. "If it had just been a little to the left that shot would have severed the spinal cord, but as it is I'm fine."

Avery very much doubted that anyone would be 'fine' after taking a sniper shot to the chest, but the UNSC used Biofoam for a reason. Any internal bleeding or organ damage could be sorted out with the medical compound- or at least, held in check until the soldier got to a field hospital.

The trio then moved off to the west, towards the pre-placed NAV marker at Bravo Base. For a while, there was nothing- no motion contacts, nothing on TEAMCOM or the UNSC E-band. Avery frowned at the last one- just a few minutes ago the E-band had been flooded with chatter from UNSC units in the area. What was going on? He tried a COM ping. Nothing happened. He turned to Kimiko and Hector, a slight tremor in his voice.

"E-band's down- I can't get anyone." Glancing skywards, he added, "Probably jammers."

Avery's COM crackled to life- it was the E-band. He blinked in surprise.

"All points this, is CENTCOM- any units east of Alpha Line receiving this transmission rendezvous at CENTCOM Delta Complex ASAP. Aerial support is inbound to cover movement." The message then repeated itself.

Avery squelched the channel- he didn't need to hear CENTCOM's message on an endless loop. He, Hector and Kimiko then doubled their pace. As they moved, they picked up further chatter on the E-band, although by now the conversation appeared to be centered on CENTCOM and the aerial support, with only occasional reports from Marine officers as they retreated from the Covenant advance-

"Hammer Three-One, this is CENTCOM, what is your status, over?"

"CENTCOM, Hammer Three-One, we are coming up on the Tanaz forest, and we'll release ordnance once we are within firing range. Confirm strike coordinates, CENTCOM, over."

"Hammer Three-One, release ordnance in grid square Lima Kilo Eight-One-One-Seven; confirm, over."

"CENTCOM, I read Lima Kilo Eight-One-One-Seven."

"That's correct, Hammer Three-One. Be advised that your fire mission will be danger close for UNSC ground assets in and around the forest, over."

"Copy that, CENTCOM- what are we supposed to do?"

Avery's heart dropped into his gut at Central Command's answer.

"Warn them."

"Copy that, CENTCOM. Over and out."

The three Spartans increased their pace to a full-blown sprint.

Several minutes later, dappled yellow and green gave way to bright and glorious blue. The three Spartans emerged from the Tanaz forest and sprinted across open grass towards a small bluff directly in front of them. A series of bluffs and ridges lay behind and around it, all leading up to the rocky plateau known as Devil's Face, which housed CENTCOM's Delta Complex. Avery slowed momentarily to consider why CENTCOM was rallying forces here- Alpha Complex was located only several kilometers further to the North, beneath the Yakrat mountain range. It would have been a much more secure location. He shook his head, banishing the thought. CENTCOM gave orders, he followed them. Everything else was academic. If CENTCOM was at Delta Complex, then he would go there.

Halfway between the forest's edge and the rocky bluffs, a shudder passed through the ground at their feet. The shudder then became a constant hum, and the feeling passed from Avery's feet to his ears as they picked up a low rumble, which grew steadily louder as something approached.

Just then, Avery's COM snapped to life once again, and a voice from earlier filled his helmet speakers.

"All points, this is Hammer Three-One. We are moving towards the Tanaz forest, grid square Lima Kilo Eight-One-One Seven. Get clear immediately. Hammer Three-One out."

Hector started to speak. "Well that was abru-"

With a thunderous roar, seven UNSC Shortsword bombers streaked barely forty meters overhead from behind the bluff, the pressure currents from their movement forcing Avery, Kimiko and Hector to the ground. Avery's eardrums screamed at him in protest as they throbbed through the pounding noise, and Avery quickly turned down his suit's audio amplification to avoid permanent ear damage- in situ cloning was both boring and time-consuming, and he had no intention of being separated from his team after their very first op. He and the others turned to watch the Shortswords, which by now were flying low over the forest, tiny black specks falling from their ventral bays. Even with reduced sound, he could still hear dull _thump_s as their ordnance hit the ground. After several seconds, the bombers pulled out of their run and turned back, flying higher this time.

At once, several things happened. First, a curtain of orange erupted at the forest's edge, and raced through the trees until not a speck of green was left. Towering flames and roiling black smoke engulfed the Spartans' view as far as the eye could see. Short of a miracle, nothing would survive that.

Second, the E-band crackled to life once again. "CENTCOM, this is Hammer Three-One- bombing run successful. All hostile contacts in one-klick radius neutralized; returning to base. By the way, three friendly IFF contacts IDed, CENTCOM- we've found your missing Spartans; send pickup ASAP. Hammer Three-One out."

"Friendlies?" Hector spat. "If we'd been a minute later, they'd have torn us all a nice new set of-"

"Just get moving…" Kimiko sighed. "We can teach CENTCOM what 'danger close' means later."

Avery had to agree with Hector, though- that had been too close. He placed a NAV marker on their location, and motioned to his teammates to stay low.

Barely five minutes later, the low, rumbling sound of jet engines filled the air once again, and a Pelican dropship crested the nearest ridge. Flattening the grass around its landing zone as it lowered itself, the dropship came to a steady hover five meters from the three Spartans. Not wasting any time, Avery, Hector and Kimiko hurried aboard.

The trip to Delta Complex was both quick and uneventful, albeit loud, as the Pelican's engines roared in Avery's ears. It touched down a little over ten minutes later, owing to an extremely crowded landing zone- the pilot had been forced to circle the area three times and maneuver away from aircraft, both incoming and outgoing, before being able to land. With silent nods to the pilot, the three super-soldiers descended and moved through Delta Complex.

One thing Avery noticed immediately was the look of the place- it did not look like a fallback position for the beaten remnants of a Marine defense force. True, there were many wounded Marines being carried on stretchers to parts unknown or being tended to by medics, but the wounded were far and away outnumbered by the uninjured and fresh. Men rushed back and forth, lugging supplies, ammunition and weapons to designated collection points, where other Marines picked up those same weapons. The air was filled with voices, interspersed with the hum of vehicle engines and, every so often, the sounds of aircraft engines, whether it was the roar of a Pelican's jets, or the whirring of a Hornet or Falcon's rotors. The Marines were not despondent or beaten-down. The more experienced ones, who could often be identified by their relative calmness, showed resignation and determination, whereas the younger, less experienced soldiers seemed more enthused about the current state of affairs.

But, Avery noted, there weren't just Marines present. Many logistics officers from the Navy were also present, their grey uniforms and blinking datapads a ubiquitous sight amongst the Marine formations. Avery understood why they were there- a good portion of the Marine forces had not been present on the surface during the initial Covenant attack. In fact, most of the Marines here were probably reinforcements sent by the UNSC fleet in orbit. Looking around again, Avery could see the distinctive black body armor and sealed helmets of Orbital Drop Shock Troopers, who seemed an army unto themselves. With the exception of the odd noncom who was speaking to a superior officer or fetching a weapon, the ODSTs seemed to stay amongst themselves, either unwilling or unable to mingle with the nearby Marines, who seemed content to stay a short distance from them out of respect. Avery noticed that more often than not, a young Marine looking at the Helljumpers would fail to keep the awestruck expression off his face.

Most easily noticeable, though, was a tight-knit cluster of soldiers who stood well apart from the rest of the personnel in Delta Complex. Two meters tall and clad in their distinctive MJOLNIR armor, forty-plus Spartans spoke quietly amongst themselves. Despite the fact that he'd trained alongside them for over seven years, Avery quietly marveled that such numbers were _here_, in a single location. As Avery, Hector and Kimiko approached, two of the group left the others and headed in their direction. Even without consulting his IFF reader, Avery could discern from their size and movements that they were Felix-292 and Tanya-386- Shadow Three and Shadow Six, respectively.

"Took you long enough to get here," Felix remarked dryly, holding his M6 in his left hand as he inspected it halfheartedly.

"Lost contact with everyone," Avery replied. "What the hell's going on here? Thought this was a fallback point."

"Twenty-eight successful ops, that's what happened," Tanya interjected, and Avery didn't have to see through her visor to know that she was smiling. "Covenant forces been pushed back over most of the continent, and CENTCOM told everyone in the sector to haul ass over here for a counterattack. Jenna got called in- she and the other team leaders are meeting with General Lane to plan the counterattack."

Avery nodded upon hearing about his team's leader, Jenna-439, but half a second later Tanya's last word hit him with the force of a MAC round. _Counterattack_. A counterattack meant that the UNSC was no longer on the defensive- that they could push back, even win back lost ground.

This was a chance to kick the Covenant off the continent, and then Midas V as a whole, and perhaps- was it possible?- out of UNSC space.

Avery shook his head, bringing himself back into the present. First things first, he told himself. "So where will we be?"

"Leading the charge, if CENTCOM has half a lick of sense," Hector snarled, but Avery detected a slight note of satisfaction in the statement. He simply nodded, and glanced back towards the east, past the now-charred remnants of the Tanaz forest. Somewhere out there, he knew, there was a Covenant landing zone. Beat the Covenant ground forces there and their forces in space would either have to glass the planet and deny themselves whatever they were looking for, or try to land again and be taught the meaning of futility.

He smiled. Up until now, the UNSC had deployed Spartans in fire-team sized units- four to six Spartans, at the most. And even this tiny number had caused incredible damage to any Covenant forces brave enough- or foolhardy enough- to face them. He smiled as he contemplated exactly what the Covenant would think about facing down forty Spartans.

* * *

**1900 HOURS, 26 FEBRUARY 2546 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**NARROW BAND POINT-TO-POINT TRANSMISSION; ORIGIN: UNKNOWN; TERMINATION: PLANET REACH, EPSILON ERIDANI SYSTEM**

_/FILE ACCESS GRANTED/ WORM-PROTOCOL FIREWALL ACTIVE/ AUTOMATIC DELETION SEQUENCE: ACTIVE_

_PLNB TRANSMISSION: ACS712-PV_

_ENCRYPTION SCHEME: ECHO_

_PUBLIC KEY: N/A_

_FROM: CODE NAME PUPPETEER_

_TO: CODE NAME OVERSEER_

_SUBJECT: PROGRESS REPORT_

_CLASSIFICATION: EYES ONLY, CODE-WORD –CLASSIFIED-, TOP SECRET (SECTION THREE ZULU DIRECTIVE)_

_/FILE-EXTRACTION COMPLETE/_

_/STARTING FILE 1 OF 1/_

_Two operations complete, and both are successful- they exceeded all expectations. Many of the Marines on the ground can't see a difference between them and the Class-Is. A couple of our own did notice one or two things, though (see below). By and large, though, they're performing up to standard. The experience barrier isn't as big a problem as previously predicted- unusual, considering they were thrown straight from training into front-line ops. Nobody here's complaining, though._

_But they can't keep doing it like this. They've shown that they can beat the Covenant back in the numbers they've been deployed in, of that there is no doubt. But to use them like this removes them from Section Three's jurisdiction, and they'll be placed directly under -XXX-'s spotlight._

_Stealth ops are already in the pipeline, and standard personnel will be phased out in favor of Type-Sierra operatives shortly. Highest-risk ops get priority, since we only have forty-eight teams. Camo systems are also being looked into- acquisition might be difficult, given how tight a ship Ambrose runs, but his R&D budget is nothing to sniff at- more than I can say for ours._

_About the above: the Class-II Sierras don't seem as quiet or restrained as the first generation. Not an issue now, but the last thing we need is a Spartan bucking authority and going rogue. Checking the numbers, though, the effect makes sense- psych conditioning wasn't that extensive compared to combat training. Cause and effect. Operatives will be monitoring them to determine the extent of that effect- reconditioning may be necessary._

_/END FILE 1 OF 1/_

_/DELETION COMPLETE/_


	8. Chapter 7: Dangerously Routine

**Author's Note**: Happy Bungie Day, folks! Enjoy this one!

**

* * *

CHAPTER 07**

**DATE/TIME UNKNOWN, ESTIMATED TIMESTAMP 1348 HOURS, 18 DECEMBER 2551 (UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**SLIPSPACE, EN ROUTE TO UNCHARTED CONVENANT-CONTROLLED SYSTEM**

**ON BOARD PROWLER UNSC **_**DEAD OF NIGHT**_

Non-feeling was a curious sensation to experience, David decided as he opened his eyes. He blinked the stiff muscles of his eyelids at the illogic of the conclusion, but then shelved it at the back of his mind. There was only one reason to call Scavenger out of cryo. They were needed.

As the transparent lid of his pod opened, David fought the urge to retch for just an instant- and then spent the next five seconds hacking and coughing as he coughed out a very specific chemical anti-freeze compound designed to prevent the moisture in living tissue from freezing and crystallizing inside the cryo chambers. While it worked unfailingly, the method in which it was to be expelled was… unpleasant, even to Spartans.

His lungs clear, he moved to a clothes rack and quickly pulled on a PR top and leggings, all the while making sure his eyes were focused anywhere but the side of the room where he'd come from. Years of waking up from cryo had made dressing a throughly nondescript experience, but Sierra, ever the regulations hawk, had insisted that every member of Scavenger be as discreet as possible. As such, David made sure his eyes were averted.

Now clothed, he walked, with Scavenger at his back, to the prowler's tiny armory. Most UNSC warships had, at this point, a dedicated room with apparatus designed for the attachment and removal of MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor. Prowlers, though, being the smallest of all UNSC warships, did not have such facilities. As such, two dozen technicians stood, tools in hand, around the room. Within such a cramped space, David very much doubted that donning the armor would be the one- or two-minute business it usually was.

Slipping on the form-fitting skinsuit was no problem for Scavenger, and neither were the gel layer or the titanium ballistic layer. The two-hundred-twenty-four kilogram titanium outer layer, though, was a different story.

The ONI technicians worked as quickly and efficiently as they could in the cramped space of _Dead of Night_'s armory, fitting and sealing each component of the self-sustaining, vacuum-capable armor with only a minimal number of collisions. Within five minutes, the suit was assembled and powered up, and David flexed his armored fingers, adjusting himself to the slight difference in force necessary to accomplish certain tasks, caused by the force-multiplying system the armor possessed. Slipping on and sealing his helmet, he silently left the room with the rest of his fire team, his helmet occasionally brushing the low ceilings. He counted himself lucky- Celia had to bend her knees to move through the ship's tight corridors.

Shortly thereafter, the six Spartans appeared on the stealth ship's command deck. As it was, space was limited. With Scavenger in the room, everyone attempted to make do as well as they could without moving around. David was reminded of a phrase a Marine had used once, "tight as a can of sardines", if he remembered correctly.

"Ah, Lieutenant," the ship's captain said in greeting, "good to see you and your team are up. We've arrived."

"Yes, sir," Sierra replied after a split-second's hesitation. Only the previous month, a field commission had been granted to Sierra, making her a Lieutenant, Junior Grade in the Navy's Special Warfare branch. David's IFF tag now identified him as an Ensign, while the rest of Scavenger had been promoted to Chief Petty Officers. While David hadn't questioned it, it struck him as odd that the Class-I Spartans had fought in the UNSC for the better part of twenty-six years without a single one becoming an officer. Someone in ONI had to be pulling strings, and David accepted that, although the new rank took a little getting used to after five years of responding to 'Petty Officer'.

"Put the feed from camera One on the main," the captain ordered, and a planet, mostly white in color with interspersed patches of blue and yellow-green, appeared on the bridge's largest viewscreen.

"Intercepted and decrypted Covenant transmissions identify this planet as 'Faithful Observance'," he continued, pausing only for a breath, "and we were lucky enough to track a Covenant ship here with a Slipspace telemetry probe. There is a Covenant military presence on the planet, although its exact size and status remain unconfirmed. But that's not why you're all here. TACMAP, please."

The image flashed, replaced by a three-dimensional grid that covered the planet, which zoomed in to focus on a small landmass in the southern hemisphere, a yellow-green patch surrounded by blue. The view closed in further, until the bulbous, rounded shapes of Covenant military structures could be individually picked out, the paths between them laid out like a spider's web. David squinted ever so slightly, and he saw the individual Elites and Grunts moving between the buildings, frozen in time at the moment of the snapshot.

"Target Area November," the captain announced, "is the largest military base on the planet. The base is protected by its own battle group- a carrier and three frigates move in geosynchronous orbit over the installation. That's enough firepower to take out anything you'd care to cram into that space, and then some. The base itself has all the defensive measures we've seen in our engagements against the Covenant, and it's quite possible that there will be some that we haven't seen. Zoom further."

The buildings and the ground around it grew in size and detail, until only one was visible. David could actually make out distinct weathering patterns and scratched on the masonry.

"November Four. Triangulation of Covenant communications signals has singled out this building as their equivalent of a UNSC NAV database and more. Deployment orders, force strength, locations of Covenant _and_ human-controlled systems that they have identified- November Four is, put simply, a gold mine. _This_ is your target, and given its status, you will not be destroying it."

David blinked in surprise, the motion hidden behind his polarized visor. Spartans and destruction tended to go hand in hand; while the association irked him slightly, he had to admit that it was fairly accurate.

"You will be delivering this," the captain held up a sliver of data crystal, "into the Covenant system. This is a fourth-generation 'smart' AI, answering to the name Siriana. She is a virtual saboteur- she'll hack through their systems and take that intel. That much you can count on." He held out the crystal. Sierra took it between two fingers, then moved to slot the crystal into her helmet's data port, but the captain placed his hand on hers, stopping her.

"I wouldn't."

"Sir?"

"Your armor hasn't been tested for full systems support- it can read a mission log or data card fine, but you might blow out your systems putting an AI in there. Besides, Siriana's carrying an Armageddon's worth of viruses behind a few firewalls in there- you don't want that around your software."

"Viruses, sir?"

"Siriana will release them into the Covenant Battle Net once that intel is downloaded. If any computerized system even attempts to make remote contact with Covenant forces on the planet once they're about, it _will_ go down. Now, ordnance…" at this, Hayden's head snapped from staring straight ahead to look directly at the captain's lined face, "You'll be equipped with an additional weapons system to assist in your insertion."

David frowned. _Weapons_ system? Unless it crashed directly into something on the ground, a Long-Range Single Occupant Exo-atmospheric Covert Insertion Vehicle, or stealth pod for short, could not be counted as a weapon.

"Once we're in high orbit," the officer continued, "_Dead of Night_ will be releasing a single F102 Condor drone into the atmosphere. The drone will be piloted from the ship, and it will be carrying four ANVIL-II air-to-surface missiles for use against a mark of your choice. Pick your targets carefully. As for extraction… you saw it on your way in. Any questions?"

Scavenger might as well have been six marble statues.

"Good. Get to your pods- you'll be dropping in ten. Good luck, and godspeed."

At a nod from Sierra, Scavenger left the room as quietly as they had entered, and made a beeline for the _Dead_ _of Night_'s drop bay.

Four HEVs sat in their clamps on each side of the room, doors open, but with weapons already secured to holders in the pods' sides. Each member of Scavenger went to the the pod with weapons they had selected. David clambered into the slightly cramped pod. To his left, an MA5B rested comfortably in its holder, and on his right, an M7S suppressed submachine gun. David frowned as he took his measure of the weapon. Logan had always been more inclined towards the SMG than him, but Sierra had insisted (with ONI's backing) on weapons that allowed for what she called 'controlled target suppression'. As such, he'd had to leave his M90 shotgun behind.

"Systems check," said a familiar voice from the pod's internal speaker, albeit one that David hadn't heard in years.

"Graves?" David asked out loud.

"We meet again, Scavenger. Good to see you all. Now- sound off."

"Scavenger One, all lights are green."

"Two, ready to go," David said.

"Two-Five-Seven, all set."

"Scavenger Four here."

"Five- everything looks good."

"This is Six- I am a-okay."

David smiled. Five years of open war had… tempered Hayden somewhat. While he was still quick to comment on many things, he was no longer as outwardly flippant as he'd been during training. It was good for the rest of Scavenger, especially considering he and Sierra no longer fought as much. Still, David thought… there was something different about him now, as if something was absent from the Hayden he now knew.

He pushed that thought aside. Reflections on how they had all changed could wait.

Graves' voice crackled through the speakers once again. "Launching in five… four… three… two… one… pods away."

There was a slight jerk as the metal teardrop was released from its perch inside the undersized drop bay, and the prowler's brown-gray hull rushed by in an instant. David looked out of his pod's front now- aside from the telltale blink of a single hull light, and the tiny spark of reflected illumination on the armor of the customized Pelican dropship David knew to be attached to the underside of their prowler, there was nothing except inky blackness.

After roughly two seconds, it kicked in. Logan's pod was the first to disappear, consumed by an instantaneous flash of white light. Then Celia's pod vanished too.

The transition to 'real' space hit David's pod with the force of a small bomb, bucking the tiny vehicle back and forth and crashing its occupant into the pod's front, in spite of safety restraints. Titanium foil and ceramic coatings sparked and peeled as they were tested by the tear between dimensions. The radiation counter in David's MJOLNIR armor clicked and beeped wildly as neutrinos bombarded the precise sensors. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. David and his relatively intact pod were now once again surrounded by inky darkness, only now a large round shape occupied most of the space below them. The line that represented the horizon was perfectly clear- night on one side, day on the other. It was as if someone had eaten half a pie off a jet black plate.

His COM crackled to life. It was Sierra. "Report in," Scavenger's leader ordered.

David's finger rested itself gently on the 'SPEAK' button. "Scavenger Two- made it out okay-" it was then that David noticed something. A slight hissing. He glanced quickly around the pod, checking for a breach or crack, but this rapid search did not reveal anything. But still, that _hiss_. He cleared his throat.

"My pod's leaking O2. Pressure sensors haven't registered it, so I doubt I'll run out."

"Good. Everyone else?"

"This is Three- I'm okay."

"Four- got a leak too. Half a percent every minute. I'll be fine."

"Scavenger Five- I'm all right."

Silence.

"Six? Scavenger Six, report in."

Still nothing. David looked out of his pod, craning his neck to try and get a better view. Aside from his own, he could only spot four other HEVs.

And then, as if for dramatic effect, a burst of purple-white light clove the darkness, and Hayden's pod leapt from the Slipstream to join his teammates.

"Don't know what the hell happened," was the first thing David heard, followed by, "but I'm here now."

"Good. All right, we'll just coast in. Follow standard drop procedure once we hit the atmosphere. Confirm."

David blinked his acknowledgement light green once. The rest of Scavenger repeated the move.

The next half hour passed uneventfully. True, Celia and Jacob had been forced to fire their maneuvering thrusters momentarily to avoid the Covenant warships holding position over their target, but David would have taken that over being inserted under heavy fire any day, preferring very much to have his feet on the ground before being shot at.

The boosters fired without a problem, and the chute engaged without much fuss. Before he knew it, David was stepping through the now-open doorway to his pod. The door itself lay several meters away, thrown there by the shaped charges mounted on its frame. David noted his acknowledgement light was green- he kept it that way. With a light tug, he pulled the M7S out of its rack and slapped it onto the magnetic panel on his left thigh. His MA5B soon sat in his hands, his grip on the rifle's handle tight.

Miraculously, the drop had not scattered Scavenger over a wide area. Lucky thing, David thought. Any more scatter and the pods would have landed in the sea surrounding the island, and they had cut it close as it was. David's boots sank slightly in dry sand as he turned on the spot. The water lapped back and forth in tiny waves not fifty meters away, punctuated by rumbling and crashing as larger breakers crested towards the shore.

David took off, running towards the IFF signatures that represented Scavenger, his four-hundred kilogram form making only light _pats_ as they contacted the earth beneath him on his earth-gouging sprint. The twilight landscape seemed to part before him, endless night underneath a dark sky- there was no moon. After seven minutes of running at thirty-six kilometers per hour, bulbous structures rose in the distance, but of more immediate interest was a crouched figure in MJOLNIR just ahead, his armor almost completely hidden in the darkness and the light undergrowth. His IFF tag read SPARTAN-196.

David moved to Logan's side, stopping as his fellow Spartan raised his right fist, the side with his thumb facing forward.

"We're waiting until everyone's in position," he said in a low, gravelly whisper. David nodded his understanding. Three lights on his display were lit up: Logan's, Sierra's, and his own. As he waited, three more dots of green flickered to life. It was then that TEAMCOM crackled to life, but it wasn't a Spartan who spoke.

"Condor drone en route, ETA three minutes. Standby." Graves' voice then cut out, and Sierra spoke next.

"Set mission clocks to countdown mode, three minutes on my mark. Mark."

David blinked, confirming a three minute countdown on his heads-up display. He took the time to inspect his gear and weapons. No problems, as ever. One of the better things about older UNSC equipment models was that they rarely broke down in the field- stories flew about MA5B rifles that had been dumped in sewers, swamps, and even one that had been driven over by a Warthog, but could still be aimed and fired without a hitch.

When the timer read two minutes, TEAMCOM crackled to life again.

"Three, visual status. Go."

"Seven patrols, three Jackals and one Elite each. Video surveillance covers the area- I spot sixteen cameras, more may be out there, over."

"Ammo bunkers?"

"No guards, and I've got a clear line of effect."

"Good. Mark Tango One."

"Copy that."

"The barracks?"

"Negative, no visuals."

"We'll get it from closer in. Two, Four, Five, get set to move on my go. Out."

Graves' voice seemed to slide out of nowhere. "Ninety seconds. One target marker received."

Preparations continued. Hayden was next. "Six, are you in position?" Sierra asked over TEAMCOM.

"Locked, loaded and ready to go," was Hayden's reply.

"Good. Move on your time- you're not fixed."

"Best thing I've heard all day."

"Sixty seconds, Spartans."

This was it. "Two, Four, Five- go."

David and Logan rose and moved as one, running towards the cluster of buildings that was the Covenant military base. As they neared it, David clapped his rifle onto his back and pulled out the suppressed submachine gun, sighting the nearest Elite down the reflex scope mounted on its top railing. As he aimed for the creature's head, the image was enhanced to double its size.

"Nice," David murmured, without really thinking it.

"Yeah," came Logan's growling reply. "Beats those iron sights on the shotgun any day."

David blinked. Had he said that out loud?

As he and Logan sprinted, TEAMCOM came on.

"Thirty seconds."

"Three- clear a path."

"Copy that."

A series of muffled _thumps_ sounded in the distance, four in all. In timing with those _thumps_ was the sight of one of the patrols dropping into the dirt, one by one. There was a brief pause, and then another quartet of _thump_s, followed by four more Covenant troops hitting the ground.

"Fifteen seconds. One target marked."

David quickened his pace, and Logan did the same. Sweat actually gathered on the Spartan's brow as he reached, and then exceeded, forty kilometers per hour. This was going to be close.

"Ten seconds."

David felt his breathing quicken, and his hands tightened almost imperceptibly on the grip of his SMG.

"Five seconds. Firing one ANVIL missile."

David saw it. A small orange tail of fire erupted somewhere in the distance, making its way towards one of the Covenant structures, which was now highlighted in red on his heads-up display. In the span of several seconds, the missile streaked towards the Covenant ammunition depot, its armored head punching through the wall before its high explosive payload went off. The force of the blast ripped through wall, door and empty space alike, igniting fusion cores and plasma batteries inside the rounded building. Flames flew upwards towards the sky as a hundred thunderbolts split the silence and a wave of superheated air rippled outwards, distorting shapes and colors in the thousand-degree haze. Elites and Jackals, brandishing weapons, ran pell-mell towards the burning bunker, eyes wide and grips tight. They surrounded the building, looking for a perpetrator, their patrols around the base's perimeter forgotten, if only for a few seconds.

Their way clear, David and Logan charged, unnoticed, into the breach.


	9. Chapter 8: A Kettle of Fish

Author's Note: I am back. I think. Well, greetings from college, ladies and gentlemen. I won't update that frequently, but I'll do my best to pull off one a fortnight (Don't know what that is? Use a dictionary).

It's been a tough few weeks in the Halo Universe, with basic principles of canon challenged at every level. A lot of it is just minor, but with regards to future writing, I have to thank **general MB** for illuminating something I had previously overlooked: The humble Magnetic Accelerator Cannon, so long in the shadow of the nuclear warhead, will take its place in my fics as THE most destructive weapon in the UNSC's arsenal. This really shouldn't affect my stories all that much, but I figured I should give everyone a heads-up before the reviews come rolling in quoting Nylund against me. Don't like the change/don't believe me/think I've lost my marbles/just wanna argue? PM me, and I'll give you a rundown on the math. You have been warned.

Anyway, enough with the gloomy stuff. It's great to be updating again. Enjoy, folks!

**

* * *

CHAPTER 08**

**1502 HOURS, 18 DECEMBER 2551 (REVISED TIMESTAMP; UNSC MILITARY CALENDAR)**

**TARGET AREA NOVEMBER, COVENANT-CONTROLLED PLANET 'FAITHFUL OBSERVANCE', UNCHARTED STAR SYSTEM**

The purple door slid aside obligingly for Logan and David, and the two joined Sierra and Celia on the inside as the conflagration caused by an ANVIL missile raged outside. Sierra removed a certain sliver of data crystal from her pack and slotted it into the data port of the door's control panel. After a split second, a green three-dimensional image came into focus. It was a woman, wearing a bronze breastplate, a leather tunic and Corinthian helmet. A bow was strapped across her back, and her right hand held a spear. An Amazon. Her eyes flashed as she took stock of the situation.

"This isn't the Covenant Battle Net," she said matter-of-factly.

"We need directions to the main terminal," said Sierra, cutting straight to the chase. "Access the building layout and relay via COM. Understood?"

Behind the nosepiece and cheek guards of the helmet, David could see the AI's eyes flash as she frowned. Apparently, taking orders from field operatives hadn't been in the job description. A second later-

"I'll see what I can do."

"Good enough," Sierra replied, yanking the data crystal out. Siriana's avatar didn't disappear, though- she'd downloaded herself into the Covenant system. Clever, David thought. Just then, lights in the side corridors simply died out, and sliding doors linking to the corridor they were traveling down began to close and lock.

"Moving you in a straight line towards the main data terminal. Follow the lights."

"Acknowledged."

A shudder ran through the ground, and one of the lights in the hallway flickered. Sierra was on the COM in under a second. "Three, give me a sitrep! What was that?"

"Missile Two fired- Graves hit the motor pool; that should buy you some time. Get moving."

"Acknowledged. Actual out."

The team advanced through the complex, not encountering any resistance whatsoever. While it made sense, as Siriana had locked the Elite forces into their respective areas of the building, it was still slightly unnerving. They came to a branching path before too long.

"Two targets," Siriana's disembodied voice declared. "NAV database straight ahead, tactical assets archive to the right. Suggest you take the TAA first."

Sierra nodded. "No surprises," she told the AI, and the door leading into the hallway straight ahead quickly closed.

"There's no unapproved wireless connection with either terminal - I'll need hard contact," Siriana told them as they sprinted towards the archive. "If you see a data port, pick me up." Scavenger didn't respond- they just kept running, only pausing outside an open set of triple doors. A console was mounted on the wall, complete with viewscreen and keypad. Also present was a slot for some sort of access card. Sierra rammed the empty data crystal into the Covenant system, removing it after an instant. Siriana broadcasted across TEAMCOM through Sierra's suit.

"Not crushing me into pieces would be nice, thanks."

"Pipe down," Sierra ordered. David was almost sure that he heard the artificial intelligence sniff.

Just then, the doors began to close, albeit slowly, and it was no challenge for Scavenger to slip inside. Seven seconds and a dozen point-blank range headshots later, the four Spartans stood in an otherwise deserted data center. The cavernous room's only prominent feature was a raised platform in its center with a ramp leading up to it, but the ramp was located on the opposite side of the platform from the door. From every other direction, a meter-deep trench encircled the data terminal, making the three meter tall platform quite defensible.

At the console, Sierra slotted the shard of crystal into a data port on one of the consoles, which instantly assumed a monotone blue hue. Siriana's Amazon avatar blossomed into shape, half a meter tall, atop the holographic displays.

"Ah, much better," she sighed, relief evident in her tone, before her voice became steely again. "Retrieving information. Be advised- I'm on an isolated server, so I can't lock down this structure's controls while I'm in here. Fair warning." She disappeared, but the blue displays began to flash in multicolored tones.

Almost immediately, heavy footfalls sounded from outside the room. Without an AI to keep the electronic locks in place, it would have been a simple matter to open the doors. Quieter, but no less alarming, was an imperious series of words in the Covenant language. Without his Covenant-English translator active, David was unsure what it meant, but he didn't need to.

After several seconds, the door to the data terminal crawled open. A lone Elite cautiously entered, and upon seeing Scavenger it raised its carbine and opened its mandibles, but the warning yell hadn't even cleared its throat when two Spartans leapt onto it from three meters above, dashing it to the floor. Its shields flashed and collapsed as they took the brunt of the impact, leaving David free to use his knife.

Almost immediately afterwards, calls sounded down the corridor, albeit in a questioning tone. David and Logan hauled the Elite corpses aside while Celia and Sierra watched the door.

"Ten percent of data retrieved," a disembodied voice said.

"Just tell us when you're done!" Sierra barked.

Just then, a green speaker icon appeared next to Hayden's name. A TEAMCOM ping.

"Sierra, hurry! They're sending reinforcements into your building- I'm going in, but I don't know how much time I can give you."

"Confirmed, Six. Good luck."

Hayden against dozens of Covenant troops. David felt a small stab of pity for the latter, but dismissed it as he, Celia, Sierra and Logan depressed themselves against the floor of the raised dais, leaving only the muzzles of their rifles and the tops of their helmets visible from the door.

Four Elites charged into the room, but then halted at the seeming lack of enemies. They spotted the four Spartans just as Scavenger pulled the triggers on their weapons. Four MA5Bs blazed to life, sending white-hot 7.62mm tracer rounds into the quartet of blue-armored Covenant warriors, and the air rippled as their shields stopped the rounds dead. In response, plasma rifles launched searing bolts of azure plasma at the prone Spartans, for the most part either splattering on the platform and scoring blast marks on the metal, or flying just above Scavenger's heads. One shot, though, burned through the front of David's assault rifle, leaving only the handle and magazine intact in David's right hand.

Resisting the urge to indulge in several of the choicer curses he'd heard Marines use over the years, David brought up his M7 submachine gun and, in one move, rose to his feet and leapt towards the Elites.

His feet hit the alien soldier first, and its shields flared silver, not quite depleted. David's M7 kicked as it spat rounds into the weakened energy field, collapsing it after only an instant of firing. Blue blood splattered on the ground a moment before the Elite it came from. The other three aliens in the fire team turned to David, but they only faced him in the milliseconds it took for the rest of Scavenger to slam into their exposed backs, toppling all three to the ground. A trio of wet slicing sounds announced their deaths.

Except for the sounds of quiet breathing, everything was almost silent. Almost. It was a few seconds before David noticed a slightly muffled noise coming from the dead Elites. More specifically, he noticed a noise coming from their combat helmets.

Sierra nodded, pointing at the corpses as Logan and Celia covered the door.

"Two- record and translate. Four, Five- seal the exit."

David unlatched the headpiece and listened to the Elites' COM chatter. The ONI translation software in his helmet booted up, translating the audio he heard into text on his heads-up display. His eyes flew from left to right, scanning the readout.

"… Security Lance One, what do you have to report? Security Lance One, have you located any additional demons?"

"Field Master, we have discovered the location of the demon sharpshooter- he is moving, and quickly. Do we have permission to engage him?"

"Go with the blessings of the gods, Major."

"Sierra, you need to hear this," David said into TEAMCOM, sending the audio package wirelessly.

Sierra didn't waste time responding to him. "Three- the Covenant has you in their sights- move!"

Despite a crackle of static and the sound of a distant explosion, Jacob's reply was crystal clear.

"No kidding! Repositioning now- I'll contact you when things have cooled down!"

"Copy, Three. Good luck. Six, are you there?"

Hayden's voice was much less clear. Static flooded the channel, and Hayden's words were punctuated by significant pauses, either by static or the fact that he kept waiting in between words, although David was never quite sure which it was.

"Yeah… here! What's going… Sierra, what's- what's happening?"

"Three's on the move, so you'll be without sniper support until he can shake the Covenant off, do you copy?"

"Got it. Just get… -formation and get- aaargh! Get out of there!"

"Six! Are you hit?" At this, David's eyebrows furrowed. Hayden's bio signs weren't even flickering, with the exception of his pulse, which was sky-high.

"Do I _sound_…Just get… damn job done!"

Sierra cut off the channel, sighing.

"Data retrieved," a crystalline female voice chimed. "Viral Packages One through Three inserted- that should be enough for this system."

"Are you transferred?" Sierra demanded of the AI.

Siriana nodded. With that, Sierra pulled the data crystal from its slot and clipped it onto her belt.

"All right, Scavenger, move to the NAV database. Five, are the shaped charges ready?"

The only answer was a resounding _boom_.

David took point, cautiously stepping into the corridor. A dozen Elites stood beyond him, including a pair headed directly towards him. Without a second thought, David dropped to one knee, primed a flashbang grenade and rolled it down the hallway. As the small metal cylinder _clinked_ on its way across the floor, time seemed to slow to a crawl. The time between bounces stretched on, and the Elites whirled around to face him in what seemed like slow motion. David pushed his visor's tint up to its maximum level and muted his audio sensors, all the while bringing up his M7.

The world filled with white, although from David's perspective, it seemed almost gray. He wasted no time, firing off bursts from his submachine gun at the dazed and incoherent Elites. From behind him, Scavenger followed suit, and before long the walls were spattered blue.

David reset his visor's viewing systems and checked the motion tracker- three yellow blips behind him, and no red in sight. David bit his lip- the technology that allowed Elite active camouflage suits to warp light around them also made them undetectable to the MJOLNIR's motion sensors. All the same, they needed to get moving. As good as Hayden and Jacob were, they couldn't hold the Covenant up forever.

Scavenger doubled back along the corridors, encountering only Grunts on their way back to the T-junction in the corridor, which they quickly dispatched. This time, though, instead of moving directly back they way they'd came, they took a right hand turn, which would lead them to the Covenant NAV database. The four Spartans arrived at a large door, distinct from every other door in the installation for the sole reason that at least a dozen Elites were standing in front of it.

David didn't even think. Three grenades cleared his belt- a flashbang grenade, a smoke emitter, and a fragmentation grenade. Less than a quarter of a second later, the three were on their way down towards the floor. Thunder and fire rippled through the floor as they went off, with a thousand points of light, a thousand needles of sound, and a thousand shards of razor-sharp metal flying towards everything within range.

Steel _pinged_ and _whizzed_ as it struck and ricocheted off David's armor and that of his teammates, and it created swirls and flashes in midair as the Elites' shields repulsed the storm of fragments, but the force of the blast had forced the aliens back. What was more, the Spartans' visors polarized immediately as the world went white thanks to the flashbang. The Elites, without visors in their helmets, blinked and shook their heads as their retinas overloaded, momentarily disoriented. And in combat, a moment was all an enemy would need to inflict a kill, which Scavenger did without remorse.

The unlocked door to the NAV center practically flew open. David, Celia, Logan and Sierra flooded in, opening fire immediately as they acquired targets. A score of Grunts rushed them as Jackals got into position, overlapping shields forming an impenetrable glowing wall against Scavenger's fire. Behind them, fire teams of blue-armored Elite Minors leveled their plasma rifles in the Spartans' direction, while a duo of Majors, bedecked in crimson, attended to a large, bulbous object in the room's center, just in front of the data consoles.

The device was at least five meters across, and sported the same purple color scheme as most Covenant ships. Long spines protruded from the main body, extending roughly a meter into the surrounding space.

"Stop them from arming that charge!" Sierra barked as she broke off to the left. Two of the Jackals, following her movement, turned right, and in so doing, broke their shield wall. David put three holes in each Jackal's head with the last rounds in his M7's magazine, and Logan rushed through the gap.

"Cover me!" he hissed to Celia over TEAMCOM, falling back a step. Scavenger Five immediately moved forward and rolled a primed plasma grenade towards the Jackals. The brilliant azure ball stopped right at their feet. For a single moment, the world seemed to freeze.

And then a dozen Jackals all dove backwards at once. David and Celia rushed forward as a pair when the grenade went off. Heat washed over the plates of his MJOLNIR armor, and the internal temperature alarmed blared for half a second before quieting. Two of the Elites turned towards him and opened fire half an instant before David and Celia slammed into them shoulders-first, draining the shields with sheer kinetic energy. Lethality, not elegance, was the rule here. Staccato bursts of fire from an MA5B brought the shieldless Elites, and as the two corpses fell, David inclined his head towards Sierra before moving on.

Meanwhile, Logan was trying to fend off the rest of the Elites. He stood over the corpse of the two Majors and held one's energy sword in his right hand, while keeping the other's plasma pistol in his left, although he wasn't firing it. With tight, lightning-fast swings with the white crackling blade, he kept the Elites back- and occupied. By the time the Elites were aware that Sierra, David and Celia were behind them, they also noticed that six-inch steel blades were entering the smalls of their necks.

As the last Covenant warriors dropped to the floor, the four Spartans ran to the antimatter charge and examined its display. A three-digit hologram constantly flashed as the icons on it shifted and changed. The second digit changed every seven seconds, while the third digit changed every second. Sierra didn't wait for the first digit to change.

"Okay, we don't have time to get the data out, and we can't risk setting this thing off. Move out."

David gritted his teeth. It wasn't even a scorched earth tactic that had driven Scavenger back- it had just been the _threat_ of the same, and while Celia was good with explosives, her abilities with UNSC- and Insurrectionist-manufactured ordnance were far superior to her skills in dealing with Covenant explosives. All the same, though, partial data retrieval was better than nothing.

"Two, you and Four lock down that door," Sierra commanded. "Five, find us a way out. Think laterally."

David nodded, and ran to the door just as it slammed shut. For several seconds, he and Logan planted several Antilon antipersonnel mines in front of the door, before moving several Grunt corpses in front of the door, making sure to check the methane tanks first. A ruptured tank was basically useless for their purposes.

The floor beneath his feet rumbled, accompanied by a huge _bam_ behind him. As he and Logan spun around, David noticed a gaping hole in the wall, only partially obscured by the sight of Celia standing in front of the breach, one of the tubes of her SPNKr launcher smoking. Two Grunts lay against the opposite wall of the corridor ahead, their limbs and heads scorched black. Tiny fires burned over their armor as the last residue from their respirator tanks combusted.

"All right, Scavenger, let's move!" Sierra roared as she moved towards the gap in the wall. Following her lead, David, Logan and Celia walked cautiously into the now-adjoining corridor, weapons raised.

David took point, advancing at a measured pace through the innards of the Covenant complex. Considering that four Spartans had just attacked a Covenant data center and retrieved what was likely terabytes worth of tactical intelligence, the fact that all Scavenger encountered was a single Elite patrol struck David as odd. Either they were being deliberately ignored, or Jacob and Hayden were creating a good deal more havoc than anticipates. While David had no reason to doubt his teammates, something deep in him, in the very furthest corners of his mind, told him that something was wrong.

As they passed the two corpses that had formerly composed the patrol, Sierra opened a TEAMCOM channel.

"Three, Six, we've retrieved the data. Covenant forces have set a charge inside the target structure and we're outbound now. Prepare for backup."

"This is Three, acknowledging. Sending the third ANVIL down now. Brace for impact."

"All right, get out here soon; I've got the whole Covenant Empire on my- _gah-stay down!_- tail!"

The channel cut out, and David frowned at Jacob's pronouncement.

"Brace for impact?"

The words were barely out of his mouth when a three-meter section of the wall caved in, followed by a curtain of fire and twisted metal. The alloy and masonry on either side of the explosion buckled and crumpled inward, the supports rent by explosive pressure. Heavy as he and Scavenger were, David was forced back a step by a titanic rush of air which emanated from the impact. The effect, though, was momentary. As the gale subsided, David and his team ran for it. Only familiarity with Hayden stopped David's jaw from dropping at the sight of what awaited them as they left the building.

Out of all the words in the English dictionary, if one had to be selected to describe the Covenant base, it would be pandemonium. It went beyond chaos by a long way. Multiple buildings lay in flaming ruins, and dozens of Ghost recon vehicles, Banshee flyers, Wraith Tanks, and Revenant attack craft were strewn, burning, broken and twisted, across the area. A good twenty Elite corpses littered the ground, either bleeding from multiple penetration wounds across their bodies or on fire as their prone forms lay just beyond the vehicles they failed to jump out of. One, though, was missing its head, which lay at the foot of another of the dead. The Jackal and Grunt dead were even more ubiquitous.

In the midst of the carnage ran Hayden. As he moved, any still-living Covenant tried to scramble out of his path, all the while either pursuing him or trying to line up a shot. With almost practiced ease, Hayden scooped up two plasma pistols, spun on one heel, and unleashed two overcharged shots at the nearest Elite. Twin crackling emerald globes slammed into the unfortunate soldier, who shook at the first hit, and doubled over as the second roiling bolt connected with its now-shieldless armor.

As the four other members of Scavenger made their way towards Hayden, the Covenant parted before them, a wave of scrambling and running forms. In the confusion, David managed to pick off several of the Covenant fighters who were still effectively resisting, who were mostly Elites by this point. Several seconds into their run, a gray-black blur, riding an orange jet of flame, screamed and roared as it hammered into the ground half a meter away from a gold-armored Elite Field Master, who was flung five meters by the resulting blast, and did not get up. Scavenger slipped out of the installation unhindered, and the few Covenant troops that did have the mind to follow were gunned down, courtesy of Jacob.

* * *

Several minutes later, in a dense section of underbrush on the island, Team Scavenger conferred.

"Sitrep," Sierra ordered.

"I'm fine," Hayden said with a sigh, "but you cut it close- if they brought the hammer down any harder you'd have had no support."

"Noted," David's team leader bit back, before turning to Jacob. "What about you, Three?"

Jacob shrugged. "All hostiles dropped, and no injuries sustained." His breathing harsh, Scavenger Three tossed the meter-long rifle barrel in his left hand into the grass at his feet and rested the MA5B in his right hand on his right shoulder.

"Let it go," David suggested. "We have to get off this rock first."

Jacob's only response was a sigh.

"Two's right," Sierra said before opening an E-band channel. "_Dead of Night,_ come in, this is Scavenger Actual, requesting pickup, over. I say again, _Dead of Night_, come in, this is Scavenger Actual, requesting pickup, over."

"This is Graves- Scavenger, is the package secure?"

"Affirmative, but retrieval is only partial- the Covenant destroyed the navigation database before we could acquire any useful intelligence."

"Acknowledged, Scavenger- designate your pickup zone now."

"Look for our IFF tags- we'll be forming a perimeter. Land in the center of the cleared zone, how copy?"

"Loud and clear, Scavenger. Bravo Three One Two has detached and is en route now, over."

"Hurry- we need evac before the Covenant can bring in aerial reinforcements."

"Understood, Scavenger. See you on the other side. Graves out."

Even before the channel had been closed, David, Logan, Celia and Hayden had moved to positions one hundred meters apart, forming a square. Jacob stood in the center. Despite the fact that his sniper rifle was no more, Scavenger Three still had the best long-distance optics of the team, thanks to his helmet.

Sierra pulled back the bolt on her MA5B as she walked away from the center of the perimeter Scavenger had formed.

"Scavenger, hold position until Bravo Three One Two approaches. Three is on overwatch, I'm on patrol. IFF tags on extreme low power and com silence unless we're engaged. Challenge on approach is 'Darkline', countersign is 'Umbra'. Copy?"

David blinked his acknowledgement light green, and watched the team's four other lights flash emerald on his heads-up display. He crouched, scanning the scrubland for movement. He watched Sierra's green-outlined silhouette skirt the landscape, and as her tag moved out of range, the outline disappeared, and soon thereafter, he lost sight of her.

The next half hour would have been supremely boring if David's senses had not been on a knife's edge. His eyes darted back and forth at every sway and shift of nearby leaves, and his ears heard every rustle and whisper of the wind. His muscles tensed, coiled springs that would be ready at a moment's notice, but years of fighting the Covenant had eliminated his nervous tension. He was a weapon with the safety clicked off, but with a steady hand at the trigger. His pulse was only a few beats above the resting rate, as he noted from TEAMBIO.

Suddenly, a rustle in front of him spurred him to action. He sprang forward, launching himself through meter-high grass until he slid to a dirt-spraying halt right in front of a figure that was as large as he was, the muzzle of his submachine gun inches from its face. The IFF reader on his heads-up display was blank.

"Darkline," he growled.

"Umbra," the silhouette whispered back.

"Move on through," David hissed in reply. Sierra rushed past him, towards Jacob. That she had deactivated her IFF tag came as no surprise to David. Both the UNSC and Covenant had devices that could scan for electronic signals, and the IFF system that allowed human forces to identify each other also lit them up on Covenant scanners. Stealth had a price, and so did communication.

Just then, the stars began to disappear and reappear in a pattern. A patch of pitch-dark sky moved across the heavens ahead of two small yellow trails. Bravo Three One Two. Their ticket out.

Behind the Pelican dropship, though, came a more menacing sight. At least a dozen oblique, bulbous forms also flew the skies, their purple metal hulls illuminated by the lights from each other's anti-gravity engines. They held a 'double wedge' flying pattern, with seven Banshee attack flyers leading in an inverted 'V' shape, with a convoy of Spirit dropships following close behind. After several seconds of simply flying in the general direction of their location, the Banshees seemed to spot- or sense- something, and accelerated, racing ahead of the Spirit transports on an intercept course towards the ONI Pelican.

Sierra was on TEAMCOM in under a second.

"Scavenger- protect Bravo Three One Two! Engage and destroy as many of the Banshees as you can- and draw their attention!"

Bravo Three One Two roared as it swooped low over the ground, the air displaced by its jet thrusters flattening grass and bushes, and even forcing David to take a step to steady himself. After an instant, the Pelican passed inside Scavenger's perimeter, and the six Spartans opened fire.

A rocket from Celia's SPNKr launcher impacted the lead Banshee, and sent it tumbling into the ground in a ball of black oily smoke and spectacular vermillion flames. At the same time, Jacob, Hayden, Logan, Sierra and David all fired their weapons, on full automatic, and the second and third flyers. Sparks erupted over the aircrafts' metal skins as the submachine gun rounds bounced off. The rounds from the MA5B assault rifles, though, scarred and dented the alloy, and before long, blood was spraying in small spurts from the back of the Banshee's canopy. A second later, the Elite pilot tumbled, dead, from the now-riderless craft, which promptly plummeted to the ground, the crash twisting and deforming its wings and body.

The remaining five Banshees broke off their chase, circled Scavenger's perimeter once, and then pounced, filling the night with hundreds of fist-sized brilliant blue stars as they fired at the Spartans.

David rolled to one side as a Banshee strafed his position, and let off a burst of fire from his M7 at its shrinking silhouette as it attempted to ascend. The Elite pilot, not to be deterred, spun his Banshee around on a dime and let off a burst from the fuel rod launcher mounted on the underside of his vehicle from only five meters in the air, and barely fifty away from David. As the sparking green bulb of energy raced towards him, David shifted his weight onto his back foot, gouging the dirt he stood on as his muscles tensed, waiting…

Half a second later, he sprang forward- just as the world exploded beneath his armored feet.


End file.
